geck

See also: Geck

English

Etymology

From Dutch gek or Low German geck, from an imitative verb found in North Sea Germanic and Scandinavian meaning "to croak, cackle," and also "to mock, cheat" (Dutch gekken, German gecken, Danish gjække, Swedish gäcka).

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ɡɛk/
  • Rhymes: -ɛk

Noun

geck (countable and uncountable, plural gecks)

  1. scorn; derision; contempt
  2. (archaic, derogatory, poetic) Fool; idiot; imbecile
    • Shakespeare
      To become the geck and scorn / O' the other's villainy.
    • 1859, George Eliot, “IX Hetty's World”, in Adam Bede‎, HTML edition, published 2010:
      … for where’s the use of a woman having brains of her own if she’s tackled to a geck as everybody’s a-laughing at?

Verb

geck (third-person singular simple present gecks, present participle gecking, simple past and past participle gecked)

  1. (transitive, intransitive) To jeer; to show contempt for.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Sir Walter Scott to this entry?)
  2. To cheat or trick.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Johnson to this entry?)

References
  • Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for geck in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)

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