Gnu.
gnu
Meaning & usage
gnu
Where this word comes from
First used by Georg Forster in 1778, transcribing English gnoo, which he himself had introduced, a year earlier, in his English work A voyage round the world. Further from Khoekhoe !nu:, possibly via South African Dutch. While Dutch gnoe is only attested later on (common Afrikaans being wildebees), it may nevertheless have existed because it would have been difficult for Forster to borrow the word directly from Khoekhoe. The earliest-ever European attestation seems to be in a French text of 1775 (in the form nou).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.