gila

G2I1L1A1
/ˈhiː.lə/

adjective

Mad; crazy; insane.

Similar
Less commonScrabble 5

Meanings

gila1

adjectivegila (not comparable)
  1. Singlishnot comparableMad; crazy; insane.

    You gila (mad) or what? Our government good government okay?

    2006, Elangovan, Smegma, →ISBN, page 31

    Synonyms: siao

Gila2

proper noun
  1. A 649-mile (1,044 km) tributary of the Colorado River which flows through New Mexico and Arizona in the United States.

    Some of its tributaries rise in the mountains to the south, in the territory belonging to the republic of Mexico, but the Gila gathers the greater part of its waters from a great plateau on the northeast.

    1895, J[ohn] W[esley] Powell, chapter I, in Canyons of the Colorado, Meadville, PA: Flood & Vincent; republished as The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons, New York: Dover, 1961, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 20
    1 more example

    On that map the Colorado River headed near the headwaters of the Del Norte (Rio Grande) and ran almost straight southwest to the Gulf of California. The Gila joined it at right angles, precisely at its mouth.

    1954, Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West, Houghton Mifflin, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 277
nounGila (plural Gilas)

plural Gilas

  1. A Gila monster.

    The dealers in live Gilas were paying local trappers twenty-five to fifty cents an inch; in turn the lizards were being sold to out-of-state dealers at one to two dollars an inch.

    1964, Will Barker, Familiar reptiles and amphibians of America, page 92
  2. A Gila trout.

    There were trout, they were small, and they were not Gilas.

    2013, Bob W. Willis, Trout Adventures, →ISBN, page 109
    1 more example

    In addition, area streams containing Gilas provide potential for far more fishing than any brown trout water — first, because the Gilas ...

    1998, Rex Johnson, Ron Smorynski, Fly-fishing in Southern New Mexico, →ISBN, page 99

Synonyms & antonyms

adjectiveMad; crazy; insane.

Similar
Also see

Origin

gila · adjective

  1. Malaygila
  2. Malaygila
  3. Englishgila

Borrowed from Malay gila.

Full word history & related roots →

Gila · proper noun, noun

  1. SpanishGila
  2. EnglishGila

From Spanish Gila, from a native (Yuma?) name.

Full word history & related roots →

Rhymes & wordplay

Anagrams

Cite this entry
APA

gila. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/gila

MLA

“gila.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/gila. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “gila,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/gila.

Source: gila on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.