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agape

UK/əˈɡeɪp/US/əˈɡeɪp/
adjectiveC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — gape sits at #14,421leans writtenformal · an editor’s judgement

Agape means with the mouth hanging wide open in astonishment. The jaw has dropped and stayed there.

It follows the noun rather than preceding it, so standing there with his mouth agape, and it belongs to the small family of a- adjectives that behave that way alongside asleep and ablaze. It is formal and slightly literary. There is a completely separate word spelled the same and pronounced differently, since agape in three syllables is a Greek word for selfless love used in theology.

Definitions of agape

  1. 1adjectiveagapeWith the mouth wide open in astonishment.C2

    “He stood there with his mouth agape.”

Also accepted in games: open-mouthed

Where it comes from

  1. Old Norse

    gapa — to gape

  2. Middle English

    gapen

  3. English

    gape

  4. English, today

    agape

2009 From a + gape. First known use by John Milton in Paradise Lost (1667). gape comes from Middle English gapen, from Old Norse gapa (“to gape”) (compare Swedish gapa, Danish gabe), from Proto-Germanic gapōną (descendants Middle English geapen, Dutch gapen, German gaffen), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European ǵʰeh₂-. Cognates include Russian зяпа. a doublet of gap.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 13 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

agape in the wild

  • Some contemporary writers have sought to extend the use of agape into non-religious contexts.

    Agape

  • The concept of agape has been widely examined within its Christian context.

    Agape

  • An agape feast or lovefeast is a kind of communal meal shared among Christians.

    Agape feast

  • Thus, in modern retrievalist celebrations of the agape feasts tradition, terms such as "Lovefeast" refer to meals distinct from the Eucharist.

    Agape feast

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the gapa family

gapgasp

agape — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others