gulp
Noun pluralgulps
Pluralgulps
- 1To swallow eagerly or in large amounts, often taking something down in a single swallow.
Runners gulp water at the aid stations without breaking stride.
She gulped down her coffee and rushed out the door to catch the train.
Oppositesip
Note
William Cowper drew the line neatly in Table-Talk (1782): "He does not swallow, but he gulps it down." Haste and quantity are what set gulping apart from ordinary swallowing. The verb is very often followed by down (gulp down a coffee, gulp it down), and it covers food and drink alike, as well as anything taken in greedily or swallowed up whole.
- 2The amount of liquid or food typically taken down in a single swallow.
He drained half the bottle in one long gulp.
Between gulps of soup, she managed to tell us the whole story.
Similarswallow, mouthful, swig
Note
Probably a borrowing from the Low Countries: Middle English gulpen came from West Flemish or Middle Dutch gulpen, golpen, perhaps imitative in origin, so that the word sounds like the act it names. Size words sit comfortably with it, as in John Meade Falkner's Moonfleet (1898), where a parched narrator swallows liquor "in great gulps." Slug is a close synonym.
- 3To react to nervousness or sudden fear by swallowing involuntarily.
Witnesses often gulp before answering difficult questions on the stand.
The intern gulped when the CEO turned and asked for his opinion.
Similarswallow
Note
A storyteller's reaction beat: in P. G. Wodehouse's A Damsel in Distress (1930), Percy simply gulped, with no object, and the moment of alarm needs no further words. The verb can also take an object, as in gulping air or even gulping nervous energy, where it borders on eager swallowing, though here nothing is wanted. Standing alone, the same reflex becomes the interjection.
- 4The audible sound of swallowing, sometimes a sign of fear or nervousness.
A nervous gulp escaped him as the elevator doors slid shut.
She could hear the steady gulps of the horse drinking at the trough.
Similarswallow
Note
Here the gulp is heard rather than measured, and it often gives fear away. In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1905), a trembling boy speaks "with a gulp," which is a natural frame after a verb of speaking. Business writing has stretched it figuratively: Collins and Porras's Built to Last (1994) wants a bold vision to produce "the gulp factor," an almost audible swallow of nerves.
- 5Expresses a moment of sudden fear or dread, imitating the sound of an involuntary nervous swallow.
Gulp. The email from the boss was marked urgent.
And then the doctor said, "We need to talk." Gulp.
Note
The written echo of the nervous swallowing sound, dropped into a sentence to narrate the speaker's own alarm. Gary Smalley's If Only He Knew (1982) tucks it into a parenthesis as an inner aside: "(Oh, what is it … gulp.)" It works best set off by punctuation, either standing alone or closing a thought. Ulp does the same job.
Less common meaning
- 6A small, unspecified number of bytes treated as a single unit, often two.
The driver fetches a gulp of two bytes from the device register.
The parser consumes the input stream in gulps rather than byte by byte.
Note
A rare piece of computing jargon for a small chunk of data. Its size is not fixed. Two bytes is common but not guaranteed, so anyone using it in technical writing should state the count outright. Unlike byte, it names no standard quantity, and because it is rare, many readers will not recognize it without an explanation.
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Origin
From Middle English gulpen, probably from West Flemish or Middle Dutch gulpen, of uncertain origin. It is perhaps imitative in origin, and is related to words like Dutch galpen ("to roar, squeal") and Old English galpettan ("to gulp down, eat greedily").