galoot

(guh-LOOT)

A fellow, especially one who's awkward, uncouth, or foolish.

No one's certain how this word came to be. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its first recorded use was in 1812.

"He was a galoot, to be sure --but then, she told herself, she did like the way he doted on his mother, not to mention his twelve hamsters and the boa constrictor he'd affectionately named 'Julius Squeezer.'"

 

galvanize

(GAL-vuh-neyes)

1. To stimulate or shock with electric current.
2. To jolt into action, as if by electric shock.

While dissecting a frog, 18th-century Italian physiologist Luigi Galvani noticed that when he touched his scalpel to an exposed nerve, the frog's leg twitched. He surmised that nerves produce electricity and the scalpel had served as an electrical conductor. (Actually, the scalpel had been lying near an electical machine, and the charged blade shocked the muscle into action.)

Galvani began a long series of experiments to test his hunch. His idea was eventually disproved, but his studies launched a new field of research on generating electricity by chemical means, and inspired the word galvanize. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman used it when thanking hackers who briefly shut down eBay and several other online powerhouses:

"Yes, thank you for doing us all a favor, which is highlighting the vulnerabilities of an increasingly wired world, but doing it in a calibrated fashion -- not so powerful that you did any lasting damage, but powerful and brazen enough to get everyone galvanized to address the threat."

 

 

gibbous

(GIBB-us)

1. Convex, rounded, protuberant

2. (Of persons or animals) humpbacked.

Gibbous comes from Latin gibbus, meaning "hump." (No relation to the ape called a gibbon.) Sometimes the moon is said to be gibbous, in which case it's more than a half moon, but less than a full one.

"A gibbous moon rose above the shoulder of 27,824-foot Makalu [Peak], washing the slope beneath my boots in a ghostly light, obviating the need for a headlamp." -- Jon Krakauer, on his team's final push to the Mt. Everest summit, in Into Thin Air

 

git

(git)

A foolish or worthless person.


The word get is sometimes used as a noun to mean "something that is begotten," i.e., "offspring." This same sense is reflected in the Scottish use of get to refer specifically to a "bastard," and more generally to a "brat," "fool," or "idiot." Git is thought to be a variation of get used in this sense.

"The girl scarcely turned her head: 'Shutup yerself yer senseless git!" -- from a 1967 article in the London Observer

 

gobbledygook


(GOB-ull-dee-gook)

Windy gibberish or jargon.

Remember Samuel Maverick, the Texan who bequeathed his name to the type of political candidate who stands apart from the herd, as it were?

His grandson, Maury Maverick, was a Texas congressman. In 1944, exasperated by his colleagues' affinity for bureaucratese, this Maverick penned a memo condemning such governmentspeak as gobbledygook. His inspiration for coining this word, he later said, was the idea of roosters "gobbledygobbling and strutting with ludicrous pomposity."

"Gore said the name of the prize federal employees can win each month for writing clearly is the 'Gobbledygook Elimination Prize.' Federal employees with a knack for words will win a button with a turkey head with a slash through it."
-- From an article on Govexec.com about the Vice President's attempt to follow in Maverick's footsteps.

 

gorilla

(guh-RILL-uh)

How'd the gorilla get its funny-sounding name? Around the fifth or sixth century B.C., a Carthaginian navigator named Hanno sailed along the coast of West Africa and later wrote about his travels. At one point in his journey, Hanno passed an island where he observed what he thought was "a tribe of hairy women." He reported that his African guides called them Gorillai. (Many historians speculate that what Hanno saw from a distance wasn't really a bunch of hairy women, but actual gorillas.)

More than 2000 years later, an American missionary and naturalist named Dr. T.S. Savage came upon these great apes in the wild. When he reported this discovery in a natural history journal in 1847, Savage remembered Hanno and his hairy women, and called these creatures gorillas.

"'Koko, the famous gorilla who is learning sign language, has invented many creative expressions of her own, such as referring to a zebra as a 'white tiger.'"

 

gormless

(GOHRM-liss)

Dull, stupid, clumsy; lacking in intelligence or vitality.

This handy word is a variation of gaumless, the word gaum being a Scots dialect term that means "attention" and "understanding." Thus if you call someone either gaumless or gormless, you're saying that he or she is lacking in sense, dull-witted, and in other words, pretty much out to lunch.

"Not that she wasn't grateful, but she had to wonder why ther friends invariably fixed her up with the same type of date -- every last one of them gorgeous but gormless."

gound

(gownd)

The gunk that collects in the corners of your eyes when you sleep.

For some reason, intrepid etymologists have traced this word back only as far as Old English gund, meaning "matter."

"Collin was never one to dilly dally in the morning: by the time he had rubbed the gound out of his eyes he was usually on his third Manhattan." -- from Depraved English, by Peter Novobatzky and Ammon Shea

 

gowpen

(GOW-puhn)

Two hands placed together to form a bowl.

Or, the amount that can be contained in a pair of cupped hands. This "handy" word is of Scandinavian origin. (By the way, if you get tired of saying gowpen, you can always use yepsen, a linguistic relative that means the very same thing.)

"She looked around furtively, then gathered up a gowpen of carob-covered raisins."

 

gridiron

(GRID-EYE-urn)

A football field.

In Middle English, a gridel was a set of parallel metal bars upon which foods were placed for broiling. This word is a descendant of Latin craticula, meaning "little lattice," the source also of English grill. Over time, gridel evolved into gridiron, and eventually the cooking device bequeathed its name to the playing field that resembles it.

"We bought a long extension cord for the TV, so we can watch the gridiron action while we're grilling out."

 

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