Gee

How to spell gee

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce gee

What does gee mean?

1. interjectionA mild exclamation expressing surprise, mild dismay, or enthusiasm.

Gee in a sentence

• "gee, that hotel was more expensive than I expected," she muttered as she paid.

• He let out a quiet "gee" when he saw the final repair bill.

Where does gee come from?

Language of origin: Other

Gee is an American coinage of the mid-1800s, recorded as a mild exclamation of surprise or enthusiasm. It is widely understood to be a softened, euphemistic clipping of 'Jesus', shortened so that the speaker could register astonishment without uttering the sacred name aloud, in the same family as 'jeez' and 'gee whiz'. A quite separate and older sense, a shouted command telling a horse, ox, or team of draught animals to turn to the right (with 'haw' meaning turn to the left), appears in English from the 1600s and is of obscure, probably imitative origin. Because the surprise sense was deliberately disguised in spelling to avoid the original word, it ended up as the plain three-letter 'gee', which is exactly why it looks so unremarkable on the page. The spelling trap is mostly that it sounds identical to the letter name 'G' and very close to 'ghee', the Indian clarified butter, so writers reaching for one can land on another.

How the word is built

• gee (imitative interjection; no internal prefix or suffix)