FreeScrabbleDictionary

gull

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
5
Words With Friends
9
Letters
4
Pronunciation
/ˈɡʌl/
See all 2 pronunciations
/ˈɡʌl/ · /ɡʊl/

Definition of gull

15 senses · 3 parts of speech · etymology included

noun

  1. A seabird of the genus Larus or of the subfamily Larinae.
    “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.”
    “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.”
See all 15 definitions

noun

  1. A seabird of the genus Larus or of the subfamily Larinae.
    “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.”
    “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.
  3. (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.”
  4. A stupid animal.
  5. One easily cheated; a dupe.
  6. (obsolete)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. […]"”
  7. (dialectal)A breach or hole made by the force of a torrent; fissure, chasm.
  8. (dialectal)A channel made by a stream; a natural watercourse; running water.
  9. A player, supporter or other person connected with Torquay United Football Club.

verb

  1. To deceive or cheat.
    “O, but to ha' gulled him / Had been a mastery.”
    “The vulgar, gulled into rebellion, armed.”
    “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.”
    “I'm not gulling him for the emperor's service.”
    “[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 […]”
  2. (US, slang)To mislead.
  3. (US, slang)To trick and defraud.
  4. (dialectal)To flatter, wheedle.
  5. (dialectal)To sweep away by the force of running water; to carve or wear into a gully.

name

  1. A surname.

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

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).

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