gawkling

English

Etymology

From gawk +‎ -ling.

Noun

gawkling (plural gawklings)

1. (rare) One who is awkward or gawky
   • 1968, A mass for the dead:

     Under it are two snapshots of my sister, and one of a skinny gawkling dressed to the teeth, with a downward smile; and to this photo of him as suitor my mother added a news clipping no larger than my thumb [...]

   • 1988, Nicholas Von Hoffman, Citizen Cohn:

     He lacked the time to study the newspapers and read about himself, but Dora and Al clipped them for him. There remained enough of the adolescent gawkling in Roy to forbid the parents to come watch him in the courtroom.

   • 2009, Dale Zieroth, David Zieroth, The Fly in Autumn:

     Bright trees wave in wind and then drop one night all their leaves and thereafter are silent, revealing themselves as mere twigs strung together for a nest where a gawkling crept from a shell and was pushed, stumbled off its edge into space, and when spring pressed [...]