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''gout'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20250714004745-00-⌔

gout - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

gout (countable and uncountable, plural gouts)

  • (uncountable, pathology) An extremely painful inflammation of joints, especially of the big toe, caused by a metabolic defect resulting in the accumulation of uric acid in the blood and the deposition of urates around the joints.
    • ✤ Synonyms: crystalline arthritis, gouty arthritis, urarthritis, rich man’s disease
    • ✤ Hypernym: arthritis
    • ✤ Once gout was confined largely to Western civilization (with some outliers, like the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan); now its ravages are global.1
  • (usually followed by of) A drop; a spurt or splotch.
    • ✤ Alternative forms: gut, gutt
    • ✤ Coordinate term: goutte
    • ✤ I see thee still,/And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood.2
    • ✤ … of whose wounds were undefined - and every throb of the veins added length to some of the red streams, that wound down the hollows of the indrawn cheeks - some of them ending in half-clotted gouts or drops.3
    • ✤ … there sprang a gout of black and oozy blood. Whereat a great cry went up and James Mure fell forward on the sand as one suddenly stricken dead.4
    • ✤ … gouts or drops from the hand of Zeus.5
    • ✤ … gouts or drops of water on their shield, […]6
    • ✤ [S]mall chunks of rubble and gouts of soot had fallen from the chimney, and were ground into the rug under his unwary feet.7
    • ✤ Another blow sent gouts of blood flying, along with gobbets of flesh.8
    • ✤ McInnis staggered back and to his feet, the chair flying aside, as a gout of blood spurted from the open wound. Veiksaar screamed, and reached up to claw at her husband’s face with her fingernails.9
  • (rare) A disease of wheat and cornstalks, caused by insect larvae.10

Verb

gout (third-person singular simple present gouts, present participle gouting, simple past and past participle gouted)

  • (intransitive) To spurt.
    • ✤ Dark blood gouts from the creature’s brisket.11

Noun

gout (plural gouts)

  • Alternative form of gote (“sluice, ditch, drain; vault”).
    • ✤ … Anton’s Gout, let it be enlarged to whatever extent it may. The Sill of Anton’s Gout is 2 feet 3 inches higher than the Sill of Maud Foster, and the surface of the water, in times when there is a full quantity in the Witham, and as […]12
    • ✤ … Anton’s Gout, and the remainder was drained through Maud Foster’s Gout, a sluice discharging the waters into Boston Haven, a mile below the town. In 1801, an Act was obtained for the drainage of these fens, the area of which was […]13
    • ✤ Vast quantities of water were discharged, which used to enter through the Gout at Langare.” - Will. Chapman, Facts and Remarks relative to the Witham and the Welland, 1800, p. 29.14
    • ✤ […] reported as to the gout at Aston Somerville […]15

Noun

gout (plural gouts)

  • (obsolete) Taste; relish.
    • ✤ After a time, however, he became more sensible of the reviving influence proceeding from renewed energy; luxurious indolence had for ever lost to him its goût; […]16
    • ✤ A modern refinement is to put laver in the dripping-pan, which, in basting, imparts a high gout: or a large saddle may be served over a pound and a half of laver, stewed in brown sauce with catsup […]17

Etymology 1

From Middle English goute, from Old French gote, gute, from Latin gutta (“drop”). Compare Spanish gota (“drop, droplet”). Doublet of goutte and gutta.

The sense shift derived from humorism and “the notion of the ‘dropping’ of a morbid material from the blood in and around the joints”.18

Pronunciation

  • (US) IPA: /ɡaʊt/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -aʊt
  • (Canada) IPA: [ɡʌut]
  • Audio (Canada): 🔊

Etymology 2

Etymology 3

Borrowed from French goût.

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 2020 November 13, Ligaya Mishan, “Once the Disease of Gluttonous Aristocrats, Gout Is Now Tormenting the Masses”, in The New York Times ‎, →ISSN, archived from the original on 30 November 2020: ↩

  2. c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i], page 136: ↩

  3. 1832, Thomas Arnold, Godwin and Goda (cont’d.), page 155: ↩

  4. 1896, Samuel Rutherford Crockett, The Grey Man, W. Briggs, page 311: ↩

  5. 1914, Arthur Bernard Cook, Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion, CUP Archive, page 323: ↩

  6. 1921, The Bookman’s Journal and Print Collector, page 45: ↩

  7. 1981, P. D. James, chapter 20, in Children of Men, page 137: ↩

  8. 2002, Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint, Dave Freer, The Shadow of the Lion ‎: ↩

  9. 2024 September 28, HarryBlank, “Not Ready for Prime Time”, in SCP Foundation ‎, archived from the original on 29 September 2024: ↩

  10. Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (1989) ↩

  11. 2001, Stephen King, Peter Straub, Black House: ↩

  12. 1800, John RENNIE (the Elder.), Report concerning the drainage of Wildmore Fen and of the East and West Fens, page 5: ↩

  13. 1881, Henry Law, George Rowdon Burnell, Daniel Kinnear Clark, The Rudiments of Civil Engineering, page 555: ↩

  14. 1889, Edward Peacock, A Glossary of Words Used in the Wapentakes of Manley and Corringham, Lincolnshire, page 239: ↩

  15. 1896 January 11, Evesham Advertiser: ↩

  16. 1838, [Letitia Elizabeth] Landon (indicated as editor), chapter XVIII, in Duty and Inclination: […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 232: ↩

  17. 1870, The Cook and Housewife’s Manual, 5th edition: ↩

  18. “gout, n.1”, in Oxford English Dictionary, Second edition, 1989, 18 September 2011 (last accessed) ↩

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Secondary

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