gooey
Part of speech: adj
noun
Morphological type: derivation
Topics: education
human-sciences
psychology
sciences
Etymology: Etymology tree
English burgoo?
Proto-Indo-European *gleyH-
Proto-Indo-European *glóh₁ytn̥
Proto-Italic *gloiten
Latin glūten
Late Latin glūs
Old French glubor.
Middle English glew
English glue?
English goo
Proto-Indo-European *-kos
Proto-Germanic *-gaz
Proto-West Germanic *-g
Old English -iġ
Middle English -y
English -ey
English gooey
The adjective is derived from goo + -ey (a variant of -y (suffix forming adjectives with the sense ‘having the quality of’)). The noun is derived from the adjective.
Base: goo
Affixes: -ey
Inflected forms:
form: gooeyer
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: gooier
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: gooeyest
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: gooiest
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: gooeys
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: gooies
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: Having the consistency of goo: soft or viscous, and sticky.
pos: adj
tags: informal
examples: gooey liquid covered the floor
The cookies, soft and gooey, proved a smash hit at the party.
[O]ysters, ice-cream, and plenty of chocolates with that goo-ey, slithery stuff in the middle. Makes you sick to think of it, eh?
He would dip the point of the yen hok into a jar of dark-brown gooey stuff that looked like tar [opium], then hold a drop over the flame until it began to swell up like a tiny balloon, adding more to it now and then.
To avoid the gooiest mess you ever saw, plus the banshee howls of your support people, empty all of the gasoline from the gravity feed gas can of the PU-422/U generator set (which powers both radars).
You and your guests will get past the slight appearance problem when you taste the warm finished cake: the brown crust is like the ideal macaroon, and the center has the gooey, custardlike texture of a proper pecan pie.
"That's next. Sprinkle it all over." She nodded at the bowl with the cinnamon, sugar and butter crumble. "The more, the gooier." / He cocked an eyebrow. "Is gooier better for a toddler?" / "Gooier is better for everyone. But let's make sure it's right." She dipped her finger into the bowl.
It took months of baking and a lot of choc chips, but finally I cracked the perfect choc chip cookie—gooey in the centre, with a crisp edge and a caramelised nuttiness from the brown butter.
And maybe Hazira was always going to be a gooey marshland, but that doesn't mean you entice the nation's poorest and most dismissed groups to live there.
On 8 September 2003, thanks to a super science waste management facility gone bananas, 8 September 2003 recurs instead and the entire world is changed. For the better, if you ask the seven unlucky sods who originally died, and are now explosively alive. For the worse, if you ask the billions of ordinary people now in daily danger of being atomized, brainwashed, or transmogrified into gooey flesh-sculptures.
gloss: Emotional or sentimental, especially to an excessive extent; mushy, soppy.
pos: adj
tags: figuratively
informal
examples: What flower has been bred in more than three thousand varieties, and become the symbol of the gooeyest human sentimentality and pampering?
Nobody goes all gooey over a character like me and talks about having half a million dollars and offers me a trip to Rio and a nice home complete with all the luxuries.
And that cat turns my stomach. I thought you said Spaniards weren't gooey—I've never seen anybody gooeyer than she is about that thing.
Yet sooner or later, even the most devout Disneyphobe would break down and admit that, as a child, they'd shed an elephant tear or two for Dumbo's mummy; or felt their nose growing Pinocchio-style every time they fibbed about the dog eating their homework; or simply swooned at some gooey gouached sunset.
She could still have a family. She could afford it. If she wanted to. But she's never felt the urge. Never felt the gooey drooliness she's observed in other women when they peek into a pram.
gloss: Distasteful, unpleasant.
pos: adj
tags: archaic
figuratively
informal
examples: Mr. Hugh Dillman's Palm Beach divorce suit will be gooey, Three of his golf-playing ???? will be mentioned …
gloss: A thing which is soft or viscous, and sticky.
pos: noun
tags: informal
examples: On impulse, Pat stopped at a bakery. […] He came out with a box full of gooies—éclairs, cream horns, Napoleons— […] and we parked outside the college grounds and ate them, yapping at each other and smearing ourselves with chocolate and cream.
I put the "gooeys," green fluorescent snots, into Louie's nose, set up his brain, and get ready to play the game with my mom. We keep putting our fingers up Louie's nose and pulling gooeys out of it.
gloss: A person who is regarded as weak or worthless; a fool.
pos: noun
tags: dated
derogatory
figuratively
informal
examples: But only a confirmed chump and irremediable ‘gooey’ comes up for a third ‘chuck.’ […] ‘Jest jollyin’ these gooeys, that’s how’, he said.
gloss: A person who favours closer relationships with other people and less structured settings, rather than formal, organized settings; also, an educational approach, curriculum, etc., which is less structured.
pos: noun
tags: US
figuratively
informal
examples: Planned variation was based on systematically applying different educational approaches developed by academic experts, each of whom was to become a "sponsor" of a single type of program – from highly structured classroom models, sometimes called "pricklies," to open classrooms and more exploratory environments, dubbed "gooeys."
Alan Watts says that these two types may be named the "prickly" people and the "gooey" people. The pricklies, he says, the Marthas, are tough-minded, rigorous, and precise and like to stress differences and divisions between things. The gooeys, the Marys, are tender-minded romanticists who love wide generalizations and grand syntheses.
Which is superior: what is known as low-structure teaching (education through experience) or high-structure instruction (stress on drill in the basics)? Many low-structure advocates, sometimes described as "gooeys," follow the theory, developed since 1920 by New York City's Bank Street College of Education, that learning must adapt to the pace of the individual child. Under this system children learn to read by being provided with a rich environment that stimulates them to learn the words they need. Many high-structure people, known in the trade as "pricklies," use the DISTAR program (for Direct Instruction Systems for Teaching and Remediation) developed at the University of Oregon. DISTAR sticks to phonics, a tightly programmed curriculum and lots of drill. […] [A] more recent local study of comparable New York City neighborhood schools showed gooeys and pricklies scoring about the same. Gooeys consistently argue that standard paper-and-pencil achievement tests are narrow and cannot measure the wide-ranging benefits of their creative approach.
The longstanding dispute between the phonics and whole language approaches to early instruction […] has been colourfully described as the ‘Pricklies versus the Gooies’. The ‘Pricklies’ emphasise the structure of the curriculum and provide lots of teacher-directed drill, especially in the teaching of ‘phonics’. The ‘Gooies’ emphasise the child’s self-directed exploration of print. The teacher provides guided experience, especially of whole language, in rich meaningful context.
Related words: goo
goolike
softy
touchy-feely
wishy-washy
Derived words: gooey butter cake
gooeyness
gooiness
gooily
ooey-gooey
Translations: