different between gaze vs gawk

English

Etymology

Akin to Swedish dialectal gasa and Gothic ???????????????????????????????? (usgasjan, “to terrify”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?e?z/
• Rhymes: -e?z
• Homophone: gays

Verb

gaze (third-person singular simple present gazes, present participle gazing, simple past and past participle gazed)

1. (intransitive) To stare intently or earnestly.
   • 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses Chapter 13

     Gerty MacDowell who was seated near her companions, lost in thought, gazing far away into the distance was, in very truth, as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see.

   They gazed at the stars for hours.

   In fact, for Antonioni this gazing is probably the most fundamental of all cognitive activities ... (from Thinking in the Absence of Image)

   • Why stand ye gazing up into heaven?

2. (transitive, poetic) To stare at.

Synonyms

• gape, stare, look

Troponyms

• (to stare intently): ogle

Derived terms

• at gaze
• begaze
• foregaze
• gazer

Translations

Noun

gaze (plural gazes)

1. A fixed look; a look of eagerness, wonder, or admiration; a continued look of attention.

   • Captain Edward Carlisle, soldier as he was, martinet as he was, felt a curious sensation of helplessness seize upon him as he met her steady gaze, her alluring smile; he could not tell what this prisoner might do.

2. (archaic) The object gazed on.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Edmund Spenser to this entry?)

3. (psychoanalysis) In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the relationship of the subject with the desire to look and awareness that one can be viewed.
   • 2003, Amelia Jones, The feminism and visual culture reader, p.35:

     She counters the tendency to focus on critical strategies of resisting the male gaze, raising the issue of the female spectator.

Derived terms

• foregaze
• male gaze
• white gaze

Translations

References

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??z/
• Homophones: gaz, gazes, gazent

Etymology 1

From Arabic ????? (qazz, “silk”) (pronounced in the dialects with /?/), less likely from ??????? (?azza, “Gaza”), a city associated with silk production.

Noun

gaze f (plural gazes)

1. gauze

Etymology 2

Verb

gaze

1. first-person singular present indicative of gazer
2. third-person singular present indicative of gazer
3. first-person singular present subjunctive of gazer
4. third-person singular present subjunctive of gazer
5. second-person singular imperative of gazer

Further reading

• “gaze” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Portuguese

Noun

gaze f (plural gazes)

1. gauze (thin fabric with open weave)
2. gauze (cotton fabric used as surgical dressing)

Romanian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [??aze]

Noun

gaze n

1. indefinite plural of gaz

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /???k/
• Rhymes: -??k
• (cot–caught merger, Canada) IPA^(key): /??k/

Etymology 1

From a variant of gowk, from Middle English gowke, goke, from Old Norse gaukr (“cuckoo”), from Proto-Germanic *gaukaz (“cuckoo”). Cognate with Danish gøg, Swedish gök, German Gauch, Old English ??ac. More at yeke.

Compare also French gauche, and English gawky and gallock.

Noun

gawk (plural gawks)

1. A cuckoo.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Johnson to this entry?)

2. A fool; a simpleton; a stupid or clumsy person.
   • 1855 Thomas Carlyle, The Prinzenraub, Westminster Review

     A Duke of Weissenfels, for instance; foolish old gawk, whom Wilhehnina Princess Royal recollects for his distracted notions, — which were well shaken out of him by Wilhelmina's Brother afterwards.

Translations

Etymology 2

Perhaps from English dialectal gaw (“to stare; gawk”) +? -k, as in talk, stalk, etc., ultimately from Old Norse gá (“to heed”).

Verb

gawk (third-person singular simple present gawks, present participle gawking, simple past and past participle gawked)

1. To stare or gape stupidly.
2. To stare conspicuously.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:stare

Derived terms

• gawker

Translations

References