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Goozle

Hush your pups, boy.

Dear Word Detective: My grandmother, who was born in a small Tennessee town that doesn’t even warrant a dot on maps, once used the word “goozle” in a sentence. It was hilarious! She took a bite of a spicy piece of Popeye’s fried chicken, and exclaimed, “Whoa! That nearly burnt off mah goozle!” My brother and I obviously busted out laughing, but once we regained our composure, we asked what a “goozle” is. She motioned towards her throat, and advised that a “goozle” is a throat. Is this a real word? My grandmother never went to school, and grew up very poor, so one can’t help but wonder if she fabricated this word. — Mark Haney.

Well, what if she did? “Goozle” strikes me (to borrow from The Simpsons) as a perfectly cromulent word. Given that somebody, somewhere, had to cook up all the words we use every day, “goozle” is one of the better inventions I’ve seen. It certainly beats “infotainment.”

Wonderful. My spellchecker finds “infotainment” perfectly acceptable. Shoot me now.

In any case, your grandmother did not, in fact, invent “goozle.” According to the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), “goozle” is well-established as a dialect term in the southern US meaning “throat” in general, or specifically the windpipe, gullet or Adam’s apple. The citations in DARE go back to the late 19th century, but “goozle” was almost certainly in use long before it made it into print, so it may be much older. Marjorie Rawlings used the term in her 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Yearling (” If he [a hog] didn’t have no goozle, he couldn’t squeal.”). Other forms commonly used include “gozzle,” “gozzle pipe,” “goozem pipe” and “goozler.”

Interestingly, DARE also lists, as a synonym of “goozle” dating back to at least 1865, the word “google,” also meaning “throat.” The founders of the search engine Google have always claimed, of course, that they chose the name as a variation on “googol,” a math term meaning one followed by 100 zeros. But perhaps there was a meta-joke in there somewhere about people swallowing that “googol” story.

If we follow “goozle” back a bit further, we come to an interesting intersection with a far more common word, “guzzle.” Although we use “guzzle” today primarily as a verb meaning “to drink liquor rapidly or greedily,” as a noun it has been used since the mid-17th century to mean “throat” (and the word “guzzle” comes, in fact, from the Old French “gosier,” throat). So it’s evident that your grandmother’s “goozle” is simply a modified form of this fine Old French word for “throat.” Not bad for a small town in Tennessee.

27 comments to Goozle

  • The meaning of “goozle” still seems to be escaping people. Let’s say this definition, “throat”, were correct. What would be the lady from Tennesee mean by saying, “Whoa! That nearly burnt off mah throat!” Burn off my throat?

    I was raised in central North Carolina and have heard and used this word hundreds of times. In central North Carolina it means “uvula” and “uvula” fits perfectly the sentence quoted above.

  • Rich

    My mom is from New Orleans and has always used the expression “I feel like I been through the goozle pipe” to mean she felt worn out, in the same way some might say “I’ve been through the mill”.

    When asked what the goolze pipe is, she refers to the pipe often seen in cartoons, that has many twists and turns that characters sometimes are forced through for comic effect.

  • H D Harrison

    The Confederate guerrilla Champ Ferguson was known to have decapitated some Federal supporters with a butcher knife. Champ was said to have cut off one victim’s head and “jobbed” a tobacco stalk down his “goozle.”

  • cee

    i was just watching casablanca with a friend and this lady in the bar had quite a large adams apple for a woman and i said “that woman sure has a big goozle”, of course that flew over his head like a bird. funny how things like that stick with you for a lifetime.
    perhaps curious but not flicted
    from tennessee

  • Kat

    I learned the term “goozle snap” as a young child. When you put your pointer finger and thumb together and “flick” someone, you are giving them a goozle snap. I never thought much of the term until I meet my current boyfriend. He looked at me strangely when I used it and demonstrated. He claimed he’s never hard a finger snap called a goozle snap.

    I attempted to Google it (ha), thinking I’d surely find some evidence of the term. To my surprise, there is none! I asked my mom, and the only thing she knew is that it was somehow passed down from my maternal grandmother’s family. Now after reading this, I’m wondering where the family got it lol

  • luvmygrands

    My husband from Southeast Missouri calls the Adam’s Apple a “goozle pin”. I have laughed about that for years, but now find that is may be perfectly applicable.

  • Nancy

    My mom, and her mom and sisters, always used ‘goozle’ in the context of that point beyond which others shouldn’t see, for example “That blouse goes down to her goozle!” referring to a low cut neckline, or “Her skirt is cut up to her goozle” meaning a very high split or short skirt.

  • mike

    The goozle pipe stretches between your piehole and your gut. Everyone knows that.

  • Veronica

    My daddy always used it meaning throat. My husband has laughed at me for years for using this & accuses me of making it up. If I ever want to get a big laugh, when we play softball or go tubing on the lake or whatever sport, I can just say “Ow! That hit me right in the goozle!” Cracks them up every time. My family (including my husband) now use it often.

  • Patricia Campbell

    Its the throat, specifically the inside of. Born and raised in Tennessee.

  • Gary

    Howdy…… interesting conversation.
    I’m just turning 80 now and remember vividly my mom and dad both, who were from the Southeast, grabbing me lovingly as a very small child and saying
    “gimme some goozle poozle!” Then they pick me up and get under my chin with their mouth and gimme kisses on the goozle.

  • Wm Hayes

    Goozle is an Old English reference to the throat area. In the early 1900’s my family owned a drug store and compounded a salve that was similar to Vick’s Vapor Rub, which they named Goozlum. I still compound this salve, as it’s a superior product using Lanolin, coco butter, oil of wintergreen, camphor, and menthol.

  • Jim

    I’ve heard the term “goozle’ used in Maine as a ditch cut into a mudflat or the throat of a stream.

  • kevin

    Jackie tells me the (gooxle) is in the throat when you eat something that makes it tickle….

  • pam g

    My 23 yr old daughter calls my flappy neck skin a goozle

  • Pat

    This morning, as I was taking some medication……my ‘internal thought’ was: “O.K. Get these down your goozle and get busy!”…..and I suddenly realized that I had not heard the word ‘goozle’ spoken since my grandparents, my Mother and her sisters and brothers have passed away!

    Was it a ‘family word’? I didn’t know. The family’s origins were in Kentucky..and I wondered if it was from there. I was so glad to find this website and discover that it is a REAL , and quite legitimate, word!…….with a long history! Made my day! :)

  • Ron

    Growing up on the south side of Chicago, a “goozle” was what resulted when you bumped your head real hard and it left a bump or knot. As in, “I hit my head on the cellar door frame, and look at the damn goozle on my forehead.”

  • Rita

    This is great! For ten years, I’ve been tickled every time my SE OK husband says the word goozle! We were after it again today when our Rhodesian Ridgeback hit himself, “in the goozle” while playing tug with my husband. We became hysterical when we found it here! These stories are great!
    When we first married, he used the word goozle, so when he said to me after eating chicken, that he “ate everything but the cluck.” I naturally asked what THAT word meant. He was just messing with me…… the cluck, cluck noise of a chicken!
    Going to look up “tump” next! ?????

  • Anonymous

    My sister used to sit in church when she was small and poke my Granny in the goozle. We are also from a small town in Tennessee.

  • Robert A. Fairey

    My father was born in the last century in Texas and I was born in Texas and will be 90 this June. When Dad told me my goozle was large, I thought he was kidding me.So my spell-

    checker is wrong now in telling me that my spellchecker is again wrong about goozle. That is ridiculous. My Family ancestor arrived in South Carolina in 1764. His children began to move out in the country and enlighten people about goozle, first in Texas. then later 3 families to California and even more in Texas. Standard Dictionary makers should start including goozle. It has ceased to be just a regional word book.
    Google lead to you. Am I glad

  • Mary Ann

    I always thought goozle was a word my mom made up as was Wa wa freea meant water. Maybe other people use that also. So funny!

  • Mr. Reed

    In the hoodoo culture of North Carolina and South Carolina, and amongst some Geechee Gullah peoples it is common to refer to the goozle when checking a woman for pregnancy. This area is specifically the area know as the trachea.

  • Chris Jarvis

    I first heard the word as a bit of professional wrestling jargon. To “goozle” someone is to grab them by the throat in a dramatic and threatening fashion.

  • Kathy

    I always thought my dad made up the word. His grandmother was German and he used it to refer to your butt.

  • Salviati

    My parents were both from West Virginia, and my mom told me that the goozle was the the floppy skin flap on the throat of a turkey (the wattle), and by extension the skin flap on the neck of a larger or older person.

  • “Burn Your Goozle” is what I named my hot version of my BBQ sauces (Carla’s True South BBQ Sauce). I even trademarked “Burn Your Goozle”.

    My granny was born in the late 1900’s and we all grew up hearing it. So, it was a perfect name for my sauce, especially since the 1st words out of momma’s mouth after she tried the hot version of my sauces, was ……”Hunny, that’s so hot, it’ll burn your goozle”.

    I ended up putting a “Mommaism” on all my sauce labels, so now enjoy spreading the word “goozle” everywhere along with a good ol’ family story – Like y’all. Yep – I’m a Tennessee girl (now in Florida but you can’t wash my accent off hot wash rag). LOL

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