gothic

1. 1.

   characteristic of the style of type commonly used for printing German
2. 2.

   of or relating to the language of the ancient Goths

   “the Gothic Bible translation”
3. 3.

   of or relating to the Goths

   “Gothic migrations”
4. 4.

   as if belonging to the Middle Ages; old-fashioned and unenlightened

   “a medieval attitude toward dating”

   Synonymsmedievalmediaeval

   Similarnonmodern
5. 5.

   characterized by gloom and mystery and the grotesque

   “gothic novels like `Frankenstein'”

   Similarstrange

   literature

1. 1.

   extinct East Germanic language of the ancient Goths; the only surviving record being fragments of a 4th-century translation of the Bible by Bishop Ulfilas

   BroaderEast Germanic
2. 2.

   a heavy typeface in use from 15th to 18th centuries

   Synonymsblack letter

   Broaderfont
3. 3.

   a style of architecture developed in northern France that spread throughout Europe between the 12th and 16th centuries; characterized by slender vertical piers and counterbalancing buttresses and by vaulting and pointed arches

   SynonymsGothic architecture

   Broaderarchitectural style

   Narrowerperpendicular

Other forms of gothic

plural

gothics·

comparative

gothicer·

superlative

gothicest·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about gothic

What does gothic mean?

gothic means "characteristic of the style of type commonly used for printing German". That is the primary sense; the word has 8 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in gothic?

gothic has 2 syllables: go-thic. The stress falls on "go". In IPA it is /ˈɡɑθɪk/.

What is another word for gothic?

Close synonyms include medieval, mediaeval, black letter, Gothic architecture. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is gothic a common word?

gothic is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.