Gag

How to spell gag

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce gag

What does gag mean?

1. nounA joke or a piece of comic business intended to make people laugh.
2. nounSomething placed in or over the mouth to prevent a person from speaking.
3. verbTo retch or choke, or to silence someone forcibly.

Gag in a sentence

• noun

  The comedian opened the set with a running gag about commuting.

• noun

  The stage magician wore a soft cloth gag as part of the escape act.

• verb

  The strong smell of bleach made her gag on the way in.

• noun

  The same gag appears in every episode of the sitcom.

• noun

  The court imposed a reporting gag on the sensitive trial.

• verb

  The dentist warned that the mould might gag a nervous patient.

Where does gag come from?

Language of origin: Other

The word probably began life in late Middle English as an imitative formation, echoing the harsh, retching sound a person makes when something blocks the throat; this is why the verb meaning 'to choke or retch' is among the oldest recorded uses, dating to around the 1400s. From the literal act of blocking the mouth came the noun for a device thrust between the jaws to keep a person silent, recorded from the 1500s. The comic sense, a joke or piece of stage business, is much later and chiefly an American theatrical coinage of the 1800s, perhaps from the idea of 'stuffing' improvised lines into a script. Because the word is so short and phonetically plain, its spelling has stayed remarkably stable across the centuries. The single repeated consonant and the simple vowel mean it carries no silent letters or hidden traps, which keeps it easy to write.

How the word is built

• gag (a single root word, likely imitative of the choking sound)