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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

gumption.

Common sense, initiative, resourcefulness.

8 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈɡʌmpʃən/
  1. Common sense, initiative, resourcefulness.

    Ireland · UK · uncountable · usually
  2. Boldness of enterprise; aggressiveness or initiative.

    US · uncountable · usually
  3. Energy of body and mind, enthusiasm.

    US · uncountable · usually
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Scots gumption (“common sense, shrewdness; drive, initiative”); further etymology unknown, possibly connected with Middle English gome (“attention, heed”), from Old Norse gaumr (“attention, heed”), from Proto-Germanic *gaumō. English cognates include gaum (“to comprehend, understand”) and goam (“to recognize, see”).

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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.