glug

Glug is an English onomatopoeic word that imitates the sound of liquid being poured or swallowed audibly. It can function as a noun, as in a loud glug, or as a verb, as in glugging water down. The sound is typically produced by air entering a liquid-filled container or by rapid swallowing, often during drinking or pouring, and is characterized by a gurgling, bubbling quality.

Phonetics and usage vary little across dialects, with the word commonly pronounced as /ɡlʌɡ/ in many varieties of English. Glug appears most often in informal writing, dialogue, and narrative descriptions to convey the act of drinking or pouring in a way that is noisy or clumsy. It is frequently found in comics, children’s literature, and media aiming to evoke sensory detail or humor.

The term can be reduplicated as glug-glug to emphasize continuous or repeated sound, and the present participle glugging describes the ongoing action. While related to other sound-imitative terms such as gurgle, gulp, and slurp, glug specifically suggests a combination of air, liquid, and a bubbling or splashing noise within a container or mouth.

See also: onomatopoeia, gurgle, gulp, slurp.