Gorge

How to spell gorge

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce gorge

What does gorge mean?

1. nounA narrow valley between hills or mountains, typically with steep rocky sides and a river running through it.
2. verbTo eat large amounts of food greedily until completely full.

Gorge in a sentence

• noun

  The river had carved a deep gorge through the limestone over thousands of years.

• verb

  After the long fast he would gorge on bread and cheese.

• noun

  Hikers crossed a swaying rope bridge high above the gorge.

• verb

  The children tend to gorge themselves on sweets at every party.

Where does gorge come from?

Language of origin: French

This word comes from the Old French gorge, meaning 'throat' or 'gullet', which descends from the Latin gurges, a word for a whirlpool, an abyss, or a swallowing throat. English borrowed it in the 1300s, at first simply meaning the throat itself, a sense now mostly archaic but still lurking in the phrase 'my gorge rises'. From the idea of the throat as a narrow passage that swallows, the word came to describe a steep, narrow valley through which a river forces its way, since such a ravine resembles a great gullet cut into the land. The same throat image also gave rise to the verb, meaning to stuff the throat by eating greedily. The silent finishing trap for spellers is the soft -ge ending pronounced as a 'j', plus the unexpected 'or' that follows the hard 'g'.

How the word is built

• gorge (from Old French gorge: throat, from Latin gurges: whirlpool, gullet)