gook

Meaning

1. (US, derogatory, ethnic, offensive, slang, slur, vulgar) A person of (South) East Asian descent (originally revolutionaries of the Katipunan then generally to any native of the Philippines, after the enemy and collaborators hid amongst them), but now especially:
2. (US, derogatory, ethnic, offensive, slang, slur, vulgar) A person of (South) East Asian descent (originally revolutionaries of the Katipunan then generally to any native of the Philippines, after the enemy and collaborators hid amongst them), but now especially:
3. (dated, derogatory) A foreigner (to the speaker), especially the (enemy) natives of a place the speaker's military is at war with or in.
4. (Rhodesia, dated, derogatory) A foreigner (to the speaker), especially the (enemy) natives of a place the speaker's military is at war with or in.

Synonyms

goo

slime

slant-eye

gunk

goop

guck

crud

muck

ooze

sludge

frog

🐸

fucker

gink

grifter

heck

jerk

lowlife

low life

minium

raff

red lead

riffraff

rip

rotter

schlep

schlepp

schmo

schmuck

schnook

scum

scut

shit

💩

slicker

so and so

son of a bitch

son of a gun

stinker

thug

turd

ratfink

scumbag

smooth operator

grume

schmoe

mother fucker

scum bag

slimebag

douchebag

sonofobitch

crumb bum

Translations

giallo

balçık

llim

tarquim

Dreckskerl

Hundsfott

Schweinehund

Schlitzauge

Filipina

Sumpfblute

- Arschloch

Abschaum -s

φιλιππινέζικα

philippin

🇵🇭

llaca

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ɡuːk/

Etymology

First attested in the 1890s, US military slang in reference to Filipinos (in particular, it is defined in an 1893 citation in Slang and Its Analogues as referring to prostitutes who followed army camps; it is defined similarly in a 1914 work). The word was used for Nicaraguans during the US military occupation there in the 1910s, and for Haitians during the US invasion there, when Herbert Seligman noted in 1920 that "The Haitians … are nicknamed 'Gooks'".
Other early uses in the 1920 and 30s still refer to people from the Philippines (a 1921 work refers to the Philippines as "Gook Land"), and the term also resembles goo-goo (“a Filipino person”), for which a variety of etymologies have been proposed; see that entry for more. (A later folk etymology suggests that during the Korean War, North Korean soldiers would shout Korean 美國 (Miguk, “America”) at Americans, who interpreted it as "me gook", as if identifying themselves as "gooks"; this ignores the many earlier examples of the word outside Korea.) Gook was used of Pacific Islanders by World War II, and Koreans and Vietnamese people by the time of the 1950s and 60s US military interventions there, which cemented the shift to meaning "Asian".