gawping

verb

present participle of gawp, chiefly British
as in staring
to look long and hard in wonder or surprise tourists in London gawping at royalty

Synonyms & Similar Words

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of gawping In response, the women maneuvered their craft behind some brush, hiding from the soldiers gawping at them from the bank. — Literary Hub, 26 May 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for gawping
  1. staring
  2. gawking
  3. gazing
Verb
  • Some edits of the clip show the character in black-and-white, staring at the camera, emulating a horror movie scene.
    — Owen Carry, USA Today, 15 Aug. 2026
  • Some of them still live in cabins and grow their own food and others spend their days staring at Microsoft Office screens, but versions of the spontaneous hippie archetype still live on within each of them.
    — Christian Zilko, IndieWire, 14 Aug. 2026
Definition of staring
Verb
  • Instead, the skin-frying Friday saw common flow of people going through, gawking at the large screens and a group of sailors allowing some passing by to do pull-ups from a bar.
    — Amethyst Martinez, USA Today, 3 July 2026
  • The walk to the stadium is a mile or so along the Alaskan Way, where restaurants like the Crab Pot are opening up, but everyone is gawking at the street spectacle.
    — Simon Hughes, New York Times, 24 June 2026
Definition of gawking
Verb
  • Bored staffers spent endless hours gazing at their phones, leading supervisors to restrict phone use.
    — Jesse Coburn, ProPublica, 12 Aug. 2026
  • The first image shows the mother-of-two enjoying a moment of calm outside, wearing a pair of pale jeans and a blue striped shirt, gazing thoughtfully into the distance.
    — Jennifer Hassan, USA Today, 4 Aug. 2026
Definition of gazing

Browse Nearby Words

gawpers
gawping
gawps
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Cite this Entry

“Gawping.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/gawping. Accessed 18 Aug. 2026.

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