goth
noun · adjective
Simple meaning
A punk-derived subculture of people who predominantly dress in black, associated with mournful music and attitudes.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
gahthIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɡɑθ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
uncountable
A punk-derived subculture of people who predominantly dress in black, associated with mournful music and attitudes.
countable
A person who is part of the goth subculture.
uncountablemusic
A style of punk rock influenced by glam rock; gothic rock.
One of the Teutonic people who invaded the Roman Empire in the 3rd to 5th centuries
A member of the East Germanic people known for their invasion of the western Roman Empire and subsequent founding of successor states in Italy and Spain during Late Antiquity.
figuratively
An uncivilized person, a barbarian, a vandal.
adjective
Relating to goth music or people.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A punk-derived subculture of people who predominantly dress in black, associated with mournful music and attitudes.
Used this way, goth is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. This is a musical use: it is everyday language among musicians and listeners, and specialised outside that.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Gentle
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Everyday but emotionally strong
Where it naturally appears
- Music/performance
- Arts writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.