gorge
pronunciation
How to pronounce gorge in British English:
UK [ɡɔːdʒ]
How to pronounce gorge in American English:
US [ɡɔːrdʒ]
-
- Noun:
- a deep ravine (usually with a river running through it)
- a narrow pass (especially one between mountains)
- the passage between the pharynx and the stomach
-
- Verb:
- overeat or eat immodestly; make a pig of oneself
Word Origin
- gorge
- gorge: [14] Gorge originally meant ‘throat’; the metaphorical extension to ‘rocky ravine’ did not really take place until the mid 18th century (the semantic connection was presumably ‘narrow opening between which things pass’). The word was borrowed from Old French gorge ‘throat’, which goes back via Vulgar Latin *gurga to Latin gurges ‘whirlpool’ from which English gets regurgitate [17]. The superficially similar gorgeous [15], incidentally, is not related. It was adapted from Old French gorgias ‘fine, elegant’, but no one knows where that came from.=> regurgitate
- gorge (n.)
- mid-14c., "throat," from Old French gorge "throat; a narrow passage" (12c.), from Late Latin gurges "gullet, throat, jaws," also "gulf, whirlpool," which probably is related to Latin gurgulio "gullet, windpipe," from a reduplicated form of PIE *gwere- (4) "to swallow" (see voracity). Transferred sense of "deep, narrow valley" was in Old French. From 1520s as "what has been swallowed," hence in figurative phrases indicating nauseating disgust.
- gorge (v.)
- c. 1300, "eat greedily, swallow by gulps," from Old French gorgier "to swallow" (13c.), from gorge "throat" (see gorge (n.)). Transitive sense from late 15c. Related: Gorged; gorging.
Example
- 1. Between bingen and koblenz , the river enters the rhine gorge .
- 2. This was when robber barons started to collect unauthorised taxes on the gorge .
- 3. The tradition of jumping from the new river gorge bridge dates back to 1980 .
- 4. Other debt-burdened western countries have embarked on a stringent diet . America continues to gorge .
- 5. Archeological finds in the olduvai gorge include stone tools , and skeletal remains of homo habilis and homo erectus , as well as bones of , now extinct , wild animals .