Definition

1. Noun:

   • A seabird: A mostly white aquatic bird with long pointed wings and short legs, commonly found near coasts.
   • A naive person: A person who is easily deceived or tricked; someone gullible.

2. Verb:

   • To deceive or trick: To fool or hoax someone; to make a person believe something that is not true.

Examples

• Noun (bird):

  • A lone gull circled over the harbor, searching for fish.
  • The sound of crying gulls is a constant part of the seaside atmosphere.

• Noun (person):

  • The con artist saw the tourist as an easy gull for his scam.
  • He was no gull; he questioned every offer that seemed too good to be true.

• Verb:

  • The fraudulent scheme was designed to gull investors out of their savings.
  • You can't gull me with that old trick; I've seen it before.

Advanced Usage

• "To gull someone into doing something": To deceive a person so that they perform a specific action.
  • The email tried to gull users into revealing their passwords by pretending to be from the bank.

Variants and Related Words

• Gullible (adjective): Easily persuaded to believe something; credulous.
  • He was gullible enough to believe the outlandish story.
• Gullibility (noun): The quality of being gullible.
  • The scam preyed on the gullibility of the elderly.

Synonyms

• Noun (bird): Seagull, mew.
• Noun (person): Dupe, sucker, fool, patsy, mark.
• Verb: Dupe, deceive, trick, hoax, bamboozle, hoodwink.

Related Phrasal Verbs/Constructions

(This word does not commonly form phrasal verbs. The verb is typically used transitively: "to gull someone.")

Related Idioms

• There's a sucker born every minute: An idiom expressing that there will always be gullible people available to be tricked. (This relates to the noun meaning of a naive person).
  • The salesman believed the old saying, "There's a sucker born every minute."

Noun

1. mostly white aquatic bird having long pointed wings and short legs
2. a person who is gullible and easy to take advantage of

Verb

1. fool or hoax
   • The immigrant was duped because he trusted everyone
   • You can't fool me!
2. make a fool or dupe of