Definition of "gape"

gape

/ˈɡeɪp/

verb
third-person singular simple present gapes, present participle gaping, simple past and past participle gaped
1. (intransitive) To open the mouth wide, especially involuntarily, as in a yawn, anger, or surprise.
  Quotations
  She stretches, gapes, unglues her eyes, / And asks if it be time to rise;
  1723, Jonathan Swift, The Journal of a Modern Lady, 1810, Samuel Johnson, The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper, Volume 11, page 467
  Eustace gaped at him in amazement. When his urbanity dropped away from him, as now, he had an innocence of expression which was almost infantile. It was as if the world had never touched him at all.
  1963, Margery Allingham, chapter IX, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus
2. (intransitive) To stare in wonder.
  Quotations
  Home I vvould go, / But that my Dores are hatefull to my eyes. / Fill'd and damm'd up vvith gaping Creditors, / VVatchfull as Fovvlers vvhen their Game vvill ſpring; […]
  1682, Thomas Otway, Venice Preserv’d, or, A Plot Discover’d. A Tragedy. […], London: […] Jos[eph] Hindmarsh […], Act I, scene i, page 4
  The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play.
  1891, Oscar Wilde, chapter I, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London, New York, N.Y., Melbourne, Vic.: Ward Lock & Co., page 5
3. (intransitive) To open wide; to display a gap.
  Quotations
  May that ground gape, and swallow me alive, / Where I shall kneel to him who slew my father!
  c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene i]
  Nor is he deterr'd from the belief of the perpetual flying of the Manucodiata, by the gaping of the feathers of her wings, (which seem thereby less fit to sustain her body) but further makes the narration probable by what he has observed in Kites hovering in the Aire, as he saith, for a whole hour together without any flapping of their wings or changing place.
  1653, Henry More, An Antidote against Atheisme, or An Appeal to the Natural Faculties of the Minde of Man, whether There Be Not a God, London: […] Roger Daniel, […]
  The hungry grave for her due tribute gapes:
  a. 1699, John Denham, Cato Major, Of Old Age: A Poem, published 1710, page 25
4. (intransitive, of a cat) To open the passage to the vomeronasal organ, analogous to the flehming in other animals.
5. (pornography) To depict a dilated anal or vaginal cavity upon penetrative sexual activity.
noun
countable and uncountable, plural gapes
1. (uncommon) An act of gaping; a yawn.
  Quotations
  Now a gen'ral gape goes round, And vapours cloud each sleepy head.
  1745, Richard Graves, Euphrosyne
2. A large opening.
3. (uncountable) A disease in poultry caused by gapeworm in the windpipe, a symptom of which is frequent gaping.
4. The width of an opening.
5. (zoology) The maximum opening of the mouth (of a bird, fish, etc.) when it is open.

Definition of "gape"

gape

verb

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

noun

Quotations