gorming

English

Etymology 1

Alternative forms

• gawming (chiefly UK, but also used in the US)

Adjective

gorming

1. (chiefly US, dialectal, New England) Clumsy, lumbering, stupid.
   • 1894, The Atlantic Monthly, volume 73, page 771:

     He was a giant fellow, -— a "great gorming cutter,” Samantha Ann Millikeu called him; but if he had held up his head and straightened his broad shoulders, he would have been thought a man of splendid presence.

   • 1913, Kate Douglas Wiggin, The story of Waitstill Baxter, page 134:

     […] to help satisfy the ravenous appetites of that couple of "great, gorming, greedy lubbers" that he was hiring this year.

   • 1937, The Atlantic Monthly, volume 159, page 638:

     "Great, gorming thing," he announced, and removed himself rapidly from its vicinity.

   • 1966, The Yale Literary Magazine, volume 135, number 1, page 47:

     A streak of lack, no get-up-and-go, always late in the tide, not sprawl enough to dig his potatoes, no faculty at all, a gump, a gawk, a gowk, a goop, a great gorming lummox. How the townsmen poured it on! But he wasn't like that, I swear.

Synonyms

• gormy

References

References

• Sylvester Clark Gould, Notes and Queries and Historic Magazine (1892): In an old note-book of my own, kept in 1851, I find the entry, “gorming,” gawky, or awkward. Amesbury, Mass. Some twenty years ago I heard it from a man mending a road near Bethlehem, N. H., […]
• Robert Hendrickson, The Facts on File Dictionary of American Regionalisms (2000, →ISBN, page 232: gorming Used to describe a stupid, clumsy person or animal, or even an inanimate object that is in one's way. “Move aside, you great gorming lummox.”
• Dan L. Soucy, Jeanne Mason, Salt and Pines: Tales from Bygone Maine (2011, →ISBN, page 60:
  from away—not from Maine.
  […]
  gorming/gormy/gawmy—awkward, clumsy, all hands and feet. “He's a gorming young one, and he'll grow up to be a ronching great man.”
• H. L. Mencken, American Language Supplement 2 (2012, →ISBN: gorming, clumsy, stupid

Etymology 2

Verb

gorming

1. present participle and gerund of gorm