''gull'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''gull'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260919121947-00-⌔

gull - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

gull (plural gulls)

• A seabird of the genus Larus or of the subfamily Larinae.
  • ✤ Synonyms: mew, seabird, seagull, seamew
  • ✤ The tide was out, and we drew up amid the strong bracing smell of seaweed, with gulls screeching, wheeling around, and gliding on the wind.¹
  • ✤ Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight—how to get from shore to food and back again. […] For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.²
• Any of various pierid butterflies of the genus Cepora.

Noun

gull (plural gulls)

• (slang) A cheating trick; a fraud.
  • ✤ BENEDICK. [Aside] I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it: knavery cannot, sure, hide itself in such reverence.³
• A stupid animal.
• One easily cheated; a dupe.
• (obsolete, Oxford University slang) A swindler or trickster.
  • ✤ You’ll excuse me, sir, but as you are fresh, take care to avoid the gulls; they fly about here in large flocks, I assure you, and do no little mischief at times.""I never understood that gulls were birds of prey,“said I.—“Only in Oxford, sir; and here, I assure you, they bite like hawks, and pick many a poor young gentleman as bare before his three years are expired, as the crows would a dead sheep upon a common. […] “⁴

Verb

gull (third-person singular simple present gulls, present participle gulling, simple past and past participle gulled)

• To deceive or cheat.
  • ✤ O, but to ha’ gulled him/Had been a mastery.⁵
  • ✤ The vulgar, gulled into rebellion, armed.⁶
  • ✤ And is all this Cabala too, and only to be uſed vvhen People are to be gulled vvith noiſy Nothings? i.e. vvith empty Pleroma’s, and ſilent Thunderclaps.⁷
  • ✤ I’m not gulling him for the emperor’s service.⁸
  • ✤ [S]peak your curses out/Against me, who would sooner crush and grind/A brace of toads, than league with them to oppress/An innocent lady, gull an Emperor […]⁹
  • ✤ She has done these things before and remembers now that she is good at them, often steadier than the men. In Berlin when Jack needed a spare girl Mary had kept watch, gulled room keys out of concierges, replaced stolen documents in dangerous desks, driven scared Joes to safe flats.¹⁰
• (US, slang) To mislead.
• (US, slang) To trick and defraud.
• (dialectal) To flatter, wheedle.

Noun

gull (plural gulls)

• (dialectal) A breach or hole made by the force of a torrent; fissure, chasm.
• (dialectal) A channel made by a stream; a natural watercourse; running water.

Verb

gull (third-person singular simple present gulls, present participle gulling, simple past and past participle gulled)

• (dialectal) To sweep away by the force of running water; to carve or wear into a gully.

Pronunciation

• enPR: gŭl, IPA: /ˈɡʌl/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
• (Northern England) IPA: /ɡʊl/
• Rhymes: -ʌl

Etymology 1

Inherited from Middle English gulle, from a Brythonic language (compare Breton gouelan, Welsh gwylan, and Cornish golan), from Proto-Brythonic ﹡gwuɨlann, from Proto-Celtic ﹡weilannā (“seagull”).

Cognate with Old Irish foílenn, Scottish Gaelic faoileag. Compare French goéland, a borrowing from Breton. Eclipsed Middle English lare (borrowed from Latin larus) and Middle English mewe (from Old English mæw).

Etymology 2

Perhaps from an obsolete term gull (“to swallow, guzzle”), from Middle English golen (“to make swallowing motions, gape”), from Middle English gole (“throat”).¹¹

Etymology 3

From Middle English gole (“a whirlpool, narrow inlet of the sea, ditch or stream”), from Middle Low German goel, gȫl, gȫle (“swamp, marshy lowland”), related to Old Dutch gulla (“pool, puddle”), Old French goille (“pool, puddle, pond”), all ultimately from Proto-West Germanic ﹡goli, ﹡golljā (“puddle”), perhaps from Proto-Germanic ﹡guljaz, ﹡guljǭ.

Printed 2026-09-19.

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Footnotes

1. 1947 January–February, O. S. Nock, “‘The Aberdonian’ in Wartime”, in The Railway Magazine ‎${}^{[1]}$, volume 93, number 567, page 8: ↩

2. 1970, Richard Bach, “Part One”, in Jonathan Livingston Seagull: A Story, Macmillan; republished as complete edition, Scribner, 21 October 2014, →ISBN, page 4: ↩

3. 1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “Much Adoe about Nothing”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii]: ↩

4. 1825, Bernard Blackmantle, The English Spy: ↩

5. 1610 (first performance), Ben[jamin] Jonson, The Alchemist, London: […] Thomas Snodham, for Walter Burre, and are to be sold by Iohn Stepneth, […], published 1612, →OCLC,,: ↩

6. 1660, [John] Dryden, Astraea Redux: ↩

7. 1697 May 5 (date written; Gregorian calendar), E. W. [i.e., Edward Stillingfleet], “Postscript”, in The Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to Mr. [John] Locke’s Letter, Concerning Some Passages Relating to His Essay of Humane Understanding, […], London: […] J. H. for Henry Mortlock […], published 1697, →OCLC, page 143: ↩

8. c. 1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Wallenstein: ↩

9. a. 1822 (date written), John Keats, “Otho the Great: A Tragedy in Five Acts.”, in [Horace Elisha Scudder], editor, The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats, Cambridge edition, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], published 1899, →OCLC, Act IV, scene i: ↩

10. 1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy: ↩

11. “gull”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present. ↩

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Secondary

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