gopher
gopher Lexical Profile
gopher Game Scores & Validity
• noun
North American A small, burrowing rodent of the family Geomyidae, native to North America, characterized by extensive tunneling habits, large cheek pouches, and prominently exposed incisors.
"The gardener was frustrated to discover that a gopher had eaten the roots of her newly planted rose bushes from underground."
A subordinate employee whose chief duty is running errands or doing menial tasks (often a variant spelling of 'gofer').
"He started his career in the film industry working as a gopher on movie sets, fetching coffee and scripts for the directors."
An early internet protocol used for distributed document search and retrieval, organizing text files in a hierarchical menu system before being largely superseded by the World Wide Web.
"Before the widespread adoption of HTML and HTTP in the 1990s, university researchers often relied on gopher to navigate directories of academic papers."
Word Nuance & Usage
When referring to an errand runner, it is often spelled 'gofer' (from 'go for'), though 'gopher' is a recognized variant spelling due to the identical pronunciation.
• Rhymes for gopher
• Nearby Words
Word Origin & Etymology
Likely derived from the Canadian French word 'gaufre', meaning 'waffle' or 'honeycomb', in reference to the complex, honeycomb-like network of burrows these animals dig.