geck

See also: Geck

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɡɛk/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛk

Noun

geck (countable and uncountable, plural gecks)

1. Scorn; derision; contempt.
2. (archaic, derogatory, poetic) Fool; idiot; imbecile.
   • 1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene iv]:

     To become the geck and scorn / O' the other's villainy.

   • 1859, George Eliot, “IX Hetty's World”, in Adam Bede‎^[1], HTML edition, published 2010, archived from the original on 5 April 2012:

     … 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.
   • 1816, [Walter Scott], The Antiquary. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC:

     I brought her frae England, and, during our whole journey, she gecked and scorned at my northern speech and habit

2. To cheat or trick.

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 The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.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, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)