overwordExplorer
ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

gormless.

Lacking intelligence, sense or understanding; foolish.

8 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈɡɔːmləs/Received-Pronunciation
  1. Lacking intelligence, sense or understanding; foolish.

    Commonwealth · Ireland · UK
Where this word comes from

From dialectal English gaum (“heed, attention”) + -less (“without”), from Old Norse gaum, from Proto-Germanic *gaumaz, *gaumō (“heed, attention”). The ‘r’ found in this spelling is a vowel-lengthening device common in non-rhotic dialects of English.

FROM WORD TO NAME

Try it on your idea.

gormless has 8 characters. Say it out loud, try it alongside a description of your project, and see whether its meaning fits what you want to create.

gormless studiogormless workshello, gormless

These are naming prompts. Meanings and pronunciation can vary; existing brand and domain uses have not been checked.

Explore the name generator

A word with a source.

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.