gull

Don't Be "Gulled"

To gull means to trick, deceive, or cheat. This word has mysterious origins but may be related to gullible. Keep your eye out for scams!


gull
[ guhl ] Show IPA
verb

to deceive, trick, or cheat


Gull: Word of the Day

More about gull
First recorded in 1540–50.
Of obscure origin; perhaps related to the obsolete term gull, meaning “to swallow, guzzle.”
Possibly the root of the word gullible.
EXAMPLES OF GULL

The girl gulled her friends into believing her elaborate ghost story.
He was gulled into believing the email came from his bank.


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gullible
Definition
adjective

variants or less commonly gullable
Synonyms of gullible
: easily duped or cheated
selling overpriced souvenirs to gullible tourists
gullibility
;
 noun
gullibly
;
 adverb


Did you know?
“Let a gull steal my fries once, shame on the gull; let a gull steal my fries twice, shame on me.” So goes the classic, oft-repeated seaside maxim reminding people to guard against being gullible. Okay, that’s not really how the old saw goes, but on the off chance that you believed our little trick, you yourself were, however briefly, gullible—that is, “easily duped.” The adjective gullible grew out of the older verb gull, meaning “to deceive or take advantage of.” (That gull originally meant “to guzzle or gulp greedily,” and comes from an even older gull meaning “throat, gullet.”) Another relative is the noun gull, referring to a person who is easy to cheat. However, no matter how much the seabirds we call gulls love to pilfer our potatoes, that avian gull has no relation, and is instead of Celtic origin—we promise.

Synonyms
dewy-eyed
easy
exploitable
naive
na;ve
susceptible
trusting
unwary
wide-eyed
Examples of gullible in a Sentence
I'm not gullible enough to believe something that outrageous.
They sell overpriced souvenirs to gullible tourists.
Recent Examples on the Web
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
So be careful out there folks and don’t be gullible.
—Kirsty Hatcher, People.com, 3 Mar. 2025
Until, of course, someone convinces a gullible public—or a U.S. senator—that all research currency, new and old, is created equal.
—Adam Marcus, The Atlantic, 13 Feb. 2025
River, his most gullible and well-meaning employee, who has a long history of bungling even the simplest of tasks, is on a solo mission to France after faking a bathtub murder.
—Brian Grubb, Vulture, 11 Sep. 2024
Their nation now appeared vulnerable and gullible in the eyes of the world—and they’d been cheated out of $7,000.
—Peter Zablocki, Smithsonian Magazine, 4 Feb. 2025

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Lemuel Gulliver
Wikipedia
The Free Encyclopedia
In Gulliver's Travels
In sequels and spinoffs
In astronomy

Lemuel Gulliver

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The first edition of Gulliver's Travels claimed that Lemuel Gulliver was its author, and contained a fictitious portrait of Lemuel Gulliver.

Gulliver captured by the Lilliputians (illustration by J.J. Grandville).

Captain Gulliver, from a French edition of Gulliver's Travels (1850s).

Lemuel Gulliver meets the King of Brobdingnag (1803), Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lemuel Gulliver is the fictional protagonist and narrator of Gulliver's Travels, a novel written by Jonathan Swift, first published in 1726.

In Gulliver's Travels

According to Swift's novel, Gulliver was born in Nottinghamshire c. 1661, where his father had a small estate; the Gulliver family is said to have originated in Oxfordshire, however. He supposedly studied for three years (c. 1675–1678) at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, leaving to become an apprentice to an eminent London surgeon; after four years (c. 1678–1682), he left to study at the University of Leiden, a prominent Dutch university and medical school. He also educated himself in navigation and mathematics, leaving the university around 1685.

Prior to the voyages whose adventures are recounted in the novel, he is described as having travelled less remarkably to the Levant (c. 1685–1688) and later to the East Indies and West Indies (c. 1690–1696). In Brobdingnag, he compares a loud sound to the Niagara Falls, so presumably, he visited the place at some point. Between his travels, he married Miss Mary Burton (c. 1688), daughter of a London hosier. As of the time of his return from Lilliput, they had a son named Johnny, studying at grammar-school, and a daughter named Betty, married with children by the time Lemuel wrote his memoirs. Mary was pregnant with another child by the time her husband left on his last voyage. In his education and travels, Gulliver acquired some knowledge of "High and Low Dutch, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and Lingua Franca"; he later states that he understood some Greek and that he "understood (Portuguese) very well".

Gulliver's remarkable travels begin in 1699 and end in 1715, having changed Gulliver's personality to that of a recluse. He claims to have written his memoirs five years following his last return to England, i.e., in 1720 or 1721. The frontispiece to the 1726 edition of Gulliver's Travels shows a fictitious engraving of Gulliver at the age of 58 (i.e., c. 1719). An additional preface, attributed to Gulliver, added to a revised version of the work is given the fictional date of April 2, 1727, at which time Gulliver would have been about 65 or 66 years old. The earliest editions of the book credited Gulliver as the author, whom many at the time believed to be a real person. Swift, an Anglican clergyman, had published much of his work anonymously or pseudonymously.

In sequels and spinoffs
Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy reused Gulliver as the protagonist of two novels recounting his further travels, Voyage to Faremido (1916) and Capillaria (1921). Both stay true to the character as a surgeon with a wife and children, but transpose their plot (and retroactively Gulliver's four earlier travels) to the then-contemporary years leading up to, during, and after World War I.
In the 2007 comic The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier by Alan Moore, Gulliver is the leader of the second incarnation of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in the 18th century, which then consists of The Scarlet Pimpernel and his wife Lady Blakeney, Fanny Hill (with whom Gulliver has been romantically involved), Dr Syn aka The Scarecrow, Nathaniel Bumppo and Orlando. Gulliver leads the League until his death of testicular cancer in 1799 and is buried in Lilliput. This version of Gulliver is evidently at least a generation younger than Swift's Gulliver; his dates have evidently been shifted forward in time to allow him to interact with other fictional characters of the later 18th century.
Gulliver is mentioned throughout the recent Malplaquet trilogy of children's novels by Andrew Dalton.[1][2][3] Taking much of their initial inspiration from T.H. White's Mistress Masham's Repose, the books describe the adventures of a large colony of Lilliputians living secretly in the enormous and mysterious grounds of an English country house (Stowe House in Buckinghamshire). In The Temples of Malplaquet, for example, Jamie Thompson (their human protector, aged 13) has a dream-like vision of the episode in which Gulliver is first captured by the Lilliputians.
In the Gulliver's Travels film released in 2010, Gulliver, played by Jack Black, is a mail room worker who fancies himself a writer but plagiarizes most of his work from the Internet. After Gulliver is assigned to write a story about the Bermuda Triangle, his ship becomes lost at sea and he finds himself in Lilliput.
In astronomy
On Mars's largest moon, Phobos, the crater Gulliver is named after him, while the crater Grildrig has the name given to Gulliver by the farmer's daughter Glumdalclitch in Brobdingnag, because of Swift's 'prediction' of the two then undiscovered Martian moons, which his Laputan astronomers had discovered.[4]

See also
Lilliput and Blefuscu
Brobdingnag
Laputa
Luggnagg
The Engine
References

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Гулливер
Материал из Википедии — свободной энциклопедии

Эта статья — о литературном персонаже. О романе см. Путешествия Гулливера.
У этого термина существуют и другие значения, см. Гулливер (значения).
Лемюэл Гулливер
англ. Lemuel Gulliver

Гулливер и лилипуты
Серия произведений «Путешествия Гулливера»
Вселенная вселенная Гулливера[вд]
Создание
Создатель Джонатан Свифт
Биография
Пол мужской
Дата рождения около 1661
Место рождения
Ноттингемшир, Англия
Происхождение
Национальность англичанин
Социальный статус
Род занятий моряк
Семья
Дети Джонни, Бетти
Логотип Викисклада Медиафайлы на Викискладе
Логотип Викицитатника Цитаты в Викицитатнике
Лемюэл Гулливер (англ. Lemuel Gulliver) — главный герой романа Джонатана Свифта «Путешествия Гулливера», от лица которого ведётся повествование.

Описание

Гулливер при любом удобном случае подчёркивает свою правдивость, о которой, по словам «Р. Симпсона», «среди его соседей <…> сложилась даже поговорка», но подпись под его портретом гласила «splendide mendax» — «великолепный лжец»

splendide mendax
Latin quotation from Horace
: nobly false : untruthful for a good cause

Гулливер рядом с бюстом Свифта пишет о своих путешествиях. Гравюра Гранвиля
Его имя — имя библейского царя[англ.] («Книга Притчей Соломоновых», 31:1). Оно намекает на его пуританское происхождение, так как они давали детям библейские имена. Также упоминается, что Гулливер учился в колледже Эммануила Кембриджского университета, известном пуританской ориентацией, а город Банбери, где на кладбище покоятся его предки, был одним из центров пуританства[1].

В произведении Джонатана Свифта Гулливер — англичанин, сын мелкого помещика из Ноттингемшира, третий из пяти сыновей. Три года он учился в Кембридже, и ещё четыре — у хирурга. Гулливер избрал стезю моряка: сначала судового врача, а затем и капитана.

После трёх с половиной лет службы на море он «бросил якорь» и женился на некой Мери Бертон (по совету друзей), но потом, когда финансовое положение его ухудшалось, несколько раз снова выходил в море.

Лемюэл имеет замечательные способности к языкам. Особой приверженности к врачебному делу он не проявляет, больше его, судя по описаниям, занимает морское дело. Человек он обстоятельный, даже чрезмерно честный, не стесняющийся представать перед читателям в непривлекательном или смешном свете. Никаким порокам не подвержен чрезмерно, очень щепетилен в вопросах чести, патриот. Склонен к дружеской привязанности, но в любовных вопросах скорее холоден.

При этом его не назовёшь мыслителем, он не блещет остротой ума, достаточно ограничен в суждениях и склонен к восторженности. Он совершенно всерьёз говорит те вещи, которые автор его устами высмеивает.

Гулливер при любом удобном случае подчёркивает свою правдивость, о которой, по словам «Р. Симпсона», «среди его соседей <…> сложилась даже поговорка», но подпись под его портретом гласила «splendide mendax» — «великолепный лжец»[2].

Нередко фамилию «Гулливер» используют в переносном смысле, подразумевая великана. Однако Гулливер был человеком обычного роста и гигантом был только с точки зрения лилипутов, а в стране великанов сам оказался в положении лилипута.