Other forms: goring, gores, gored
Gore is thick blood from a wound. Covered in gore, scenes of gore, blood and gore.
It means blood that has been shed and thickened, which is why it belongs to battlefields and horror films rather than to hospitals. Gory describes a scene full of it, and a gory detail is one nobody needed. There is a separate verb gore, meaning for an animal to pierce with a horn, and a separate noun meaning a triangular panel of cloth in a skirt or a sail.
1noungoreThick blood from a wound.
“The horror film was full of blood and gore, so I watched it through my fingers.”
2verbpierceTo pierce with a horn, of an animal.
“The matador was gored by the bull and carried from the ring.”
gore is shed blood.
Old English gor meant dung, filth or muck. The narrowing to shed blood happened in English, so gore was unpleasant long before it was bloody.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʷʰer- — hot; warm
Proto-Germanic
*gurą — half-digested stomach contents; faeces; manure
Proto-West Germanic
*gor
Old English
gor — manure, dung, filth, muck, dirt
Middle English
gore
English, today
gore
Built from
From Middle English gore, gor, gorre (“mud, muck”), from Old English gor (“manure, dung, filth, muck, dirt”), from Proto-West Germanic gor, from Proto-Germanic gurą (“half-digested stomach contents; faeces; manure”), from Proto-Indo-European gʷʰer- (“hot; warm”). Cognate to Old Norse gorr, gor (“intestines, (half-digested) intestinal contents, filth, dung; peat, silt earth”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire