gophern.1
/ˈɡəʊfə/, U.S. /ˈɡoʊfər/ U.S.
1.
a. A burrowing rodent of the genera Geomys and Thomomys; a pocket gopher or pouched rat.
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the world > animals > mammals > group Unguiculata or clawed mammal > order Rodentia or rodent > [noun] > family Geomyidae (gopher)
sand rat1781
tuza1787
mungofa1789
salamander1805
gopher1814
pocket gopher1873
1814 H. M. Brackenridge Views Louisiana i. v. 58 The Gopher..lives under ground, in the prairies, and is also found east of the Mississippi.
1841 G. Catlin Lett. N. Amer. Indians II. liv. 165 The subterraneous whistle of the busy gophirs that were ploughing and vaulting the earth beneath us.
1853 W. C. Bryant Poems (new ed.) 220 The gopher mines the ground Where stood their swarming cities.
1883 B. Harte In Carquinez Woods vii. 161 [She] went like a squirrel up a tree or down like a gopher in the ground.
b. A native or inhabitant of Arkansas or Minnesota.
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1845 in C. Cist Cincinnati Misc. 240 The inhabitants of..Arkansas [are called] Gophers.
1872 Harper's Mag. Jan. 317/2 The various nicknames given to the States and people of this republic..Minnesota, Gophers.
1873 J. H. Beadle Undeveloped West xxxiii. 706 In May, 1859, I first became a ‘gopher’,—practical Western title of the Minnesotians.
1949 Amer. Speech 24 26.
2. A burrowing or ground squirrel of the sub-family Spermophilinæ; a spermophile.
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the world > animals > mammals > group Unguiculata or clawed mammal > order Rodentia or rodent > [noun] > family Sciuridae (squirrel) > genus Spermophilus (spermophile)
ground-squirrel1726
spermophile1824
gopher1874
1874 E. Coues Birds Northwest 357 Gopher: Frontier vernacular name for all the ground-squirrels (Spermophili) indiscriminately.
1883 Leisure Hour 475/2 Numbers of..grey..land squirrels (gophers) scampered..over the flats.
3.
a. A burrowing land-tortoise ( Testudo carolina), of nocturnal habits, common in the southern U.S.
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the world > animals > reptiles > order Chelonia (turtles and tortoises) > [noun] > suborder Cryptodira > family Testudinae > testudo carolina (gopher)
gopher1791
mungofa1844
1791 W. Bartram Trav. N. & S. Carolina 18 The dens, or caverns, dug..in the sand hills, by the great land-tortoise, called here Gopher, present a very singular appearance.
1845 C. Lyell Trav. N. Amer. I. 161 I frequently observed the holes of the gopher, a kind of land-tortoise.
1884 Times 18 Apr. 8 They vary this with a fish or gopher caught in the lakes or woods, the gopher being a species of land turtle.
b. A native or inhabitant of Florida.
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1869 Overland Monthly Aug. 129/1 On account of the great number of gophers in that State,..a Floridian is called a ‘Gopher’.
4. A large burrowing snake of the southern United States; also, the bull-snake. Also gopher-snake. ( Cent. Dict.)
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the world > animals > reptiles > order Squamata (lizards and snakes) > suborder Ophidia (snakes) > types of snake > [noun] > family Colubridae > drymarchon couperi (indigo-snake)
gopher-snake1837
cribo1871
indigo-snake1884
1837 J. L. Williams Territory of Florida 68 The Bull Snake..is sometimes called the Gopher snake.
1853 S. F. Baird & C. Girard Catal. N. Amer. Reptiles i. 165 Gopher Snake (Georgia Couperi).
1884–5 Riverside Nat. Hist. (1888) III. 367 Spilotes couperi..is known by the negroes as the indigo or gopher-snake.
5. Mining. = gopher-drift n. at Compounds 2.
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1881 [see gopher-drift n. at Compounds 2].
Compounds
C1. General attributive.
gopher-burrow n.
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1850 L. H. Garrard Wah-to-Yah (1927) x. 138 The animals..stumbled more than once in the numerous gopher burrows.
1903 A. Adams Log of Cowboy iv. 42 Officer's horse suddenly struck a Gopher burrow with his front feet.
gopher-hill n.
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1841 G. Catlin Lett. N. Amer. Indians II. liv. 166 Over an extended plain are seen, like gophir hills, their excavations, ancient and recent.
gopher-pelt n.
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1891 Cent. Mag. Nov. 62 I cannot pay for a team each year with gopher pelts as others do.
C2.
gopher-drift n. (see quot.).
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society > occupation and work > workplace > places where raw materials are extracted > mine > [noun] > passage > horizontal > types of
level1721
roadway1832
side drift1837
narrow1850
entry1854
rise heading1872
cross-head1877
sump drift1880
gopher-drift1881
stone-heading1892
1881 Trans. Amer. Inst. Mining Engineers 1880–1 9 142 Gopher or Gopher-drift, an irregular prospecting-drift, following or seeking the ore without regard to maintenance of a regular grade or section.
gopher-hole n. (a) the opening of a gopher's burrow; (b) (see gopher v. 2).
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the world > animals > mammals > group Unguiculata or clawed mammal > order Rodentia or rodent > [noun] > family Geomyidae (gopher) > opening of burrow
gopher-hole1865
1865 N.Y. Herald in Morning Star 3 Feb. Some of our troops covering themselves from the fire by resort to the gopher holes in the vicinage.
1883 R. L. Stevenson Silverado Squatters ii. ii. 90 The meanest boy could lead them miles out of their way to see a gopher-hole.
gopher man n. ‘a safe-blower (Thieves' slang)’ ( Cent. Dict.); also elliptically gopher.
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the mind > possession > taking > stealing or theft > thief > burglar > [noun] > safe-breaker
chest-breaker1604
screwsman1819
safe-breaker1860
safe-blower1867
safe-cracker1873
peterman1900
gopher man1901
yegg1903
yeggman1906
pete-man1907
tool-man1909
1901 ‘J. Flynt’ World of Graft 220 Gopher-men, safe-blowers.
1926 J. Black You can't Win ii. 12 Famous ‘gopher men’ who tunneled under banks like gophers and carried away their plunder after months of dangerous endeavor.
1928 M. C. Sharpe Chicago May 287 Gopher, one who tunnels to steal.
gopher-plum n. (see quots.).
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1893 I. K. Funk et al. Standard Dict. Eng. Lang. I Gopher-plum, the Ogeechee lime (Nyssa capitata).
gopher-root n. (see quots.).
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1889 Cent. Dict. Gopher-root, a low rosaceous shrub, Chrysobalanus oblongifolius, with extensively creeping underground stems, found in the sandy pine-barrens of Florida, Georgia, and Alabama.
Gopher State n. a nickname for Minnesota.
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1880 J. M. Farrar Five Years Minnesota 166 Gophers are here such a pest to the farmer that Minnesota has been called the ‘Gopher State’.
1963 R. I. McDavid in R. I. McDavid & D. W. Maurer Mencken's Amer. Lang. (new ed.) x. 695 Minnesota..popularly..is the Gopher State,..and the football representatives of its state university are known as the Golden Gophers.
Draft additions March 2003
Computing. Usually with capital initial. [Named after the gopher mascot of the University of Minnesota, U.S., where the system was invented (compare Gopher State above), probably partly with allusion to the tunnelling activities of gophers and the ability of the computer system to ‘dig’ through the internet for information, and partly punningly after gofer n.2] A menu- and text-based system created as a user-friendly resource for searching, accessing, and displaying electronic documents or executing programs stored on a network system, esp. the internet.The system predates the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web, which has now largely superseded it.
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1991 F. Anklesaria Notes on Internet Gopher Protocol (Electronic text) (Internal document, Univ. of Minnesota) 1 Apr. 1 The internet Gopher protocol is so simple that it does not require a detailed syntax of commands and replies.
1992 Minnesota Daily 31 Jan. 3/2 Development on the gopher started in March 1991, according to McCahill, and the system has been running for about three months.
1994 Sci. Amer. Mar. 78/1 Running Gopher initiates a dialogue between a client program on the user's machine and a Gopher server somewhere on the Internet.
1998 R. Darnell et al. HTML 4 Unleashed iii. xii. 189 Although there are several different transfer protocols or schemes, ranging from older ones like Gopher and WAIS to obscure ones like Prospero, HTML authors are generally concerned with only the few URL schemes currently in common use.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1900; most recently modified version published online June 2022).
gophern.2
/ˈɡəʊfə/, U.S. /ˈɡoʊfər/ The tree of the wood of which the ark was made. Chiefly in combination gopher-wood n. applied in U.S. to the yellow-wood ( Cladrastis tinctoria).
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the world > plants > particular plants > cultivated or valued plants > particular timber trees or shrubs > [noun] > biblical timber trees
gopher-wood1611
shittah tree1611
shittim1668
1611 Bible (King James) Gen. vi. 14 Make thee an Arke of Gopher~wood . View more context for this quotation
1856 T. Aird Poet. Wks. (new ed.) 101 There to a pillar of black gopher-wood Brought near, a fettered prisoner he stood.
1867 J. Ingelow Story of Doom i. 20 Where the palm, The almug, and the gophir shot their heads.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1900; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
gopherv.
/ˈɡəʊfə/, U.S. /ˈɡoʊfər/ U.S.
1. intransitive. To act like a gopher; to burrow.
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1893 Scribner's Mag. Apr. 473/2 At first were those who..gophered under the mighty walls of the temple.
2. intransitive. ‘In Mining, to begin or carry on mining operations at hap-hazard, or on a small scale; mine without any reference to the possibility of future permanent development. Such mine-openings are frequently called gopher-holes and coyote-holes (Pacific States)’ ( Cent. Dict.). Also transitive.
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1905 R. E. Beach Pardners i. 22 We kept gophering around till March, in hopes.
1916 Daily Colonist (Victoria, Brit. Columbia) 19 July 3/3 The numerous dumps along the hillside indicate how thoroughly the gulch has been gophered in the search for gold.
1927 C. M. Russell Trails plowed Under 129 This old boy is a prospector and goes gopherin' 'round the hills, hopin' he'll find something.
Derivatives
ˈgophering n.
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1910 Sat. Evening Post 13 Aug. 4/1 Promising mines did ‘gophering’ or development work by contract.
1966 McGraw-Hill Encycl. Sci. & Technol. (rev. ed.) VIII. 481/1 Gophering, or coyoting, refers to small-scale mining utilizing small, irregular excavations in ground that usually stands without support.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1900; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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