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gobo.

A screen (often in disc form) placed between a light and an illuminated actor or object in order to diffuse the glare.

4 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈɡəʊbəʊ/Received-Pronunciation/ˈɡoʊˌboʊ/General-American
  1. A screen (often in disc form) placed between a light and an illuminated actor or object in order to diffuse the glare.

  2. A device used to shield a microphone from extraneous sounds.

  3. A template inserted over a light source to control the shape of the thrown light.

Where this word comes from

Uncertain; possibly from go-b(etween) (“intermediary, middleman”) + -o (suffix forming informal terms).

noun/ˈɡəʊbəʊ/Received-Pronunciation/ˈɡɒ-/Received-Pronunciation/ˈɡoʊˌboʊ/General-American
  1. The taproot of young edible burdock plants (Arctium lappa), eaten as a root vegetable.

    uncountable
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Japanese ごぼう, ゴボウ, 牛蒡 (gobō, “burdock (Arctium lappa); burdock root”), from Middle Chinese 牛蒡 (ŋɨu pɑŋ^X, “burdock”) (modern Mandarin 牛蒡 (niúbàng)), from 牛 (ŋɨu, “ox”) + 蒡 (pɑŋ^X, a word only appearing in the compound 牛蒡), possibly because oxen have been observed eating the leaves of the plant when recovering from illness.

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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.