gad
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɡæd/
rhymes: -æd
Forms: form: gads
Etymology: From Middle English gad, gadde, borrowed from Old Norse gaddr (“goad, spike”), from Proto-Germanic *gazdaz (“spike, rod, stake”). Doublet of goad and yard.
Senses: examples: text: Ist yoakes and bowes and gad and yoaksticks there?
ref: 1684, Meriton, Praise Ale, l. 100, in 1851, James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, The Yorkshire Anthology: A Collection of Ancient and Modern Ballads, Poems and Songs, Relating to the County of Yorkshire, page 71
text: Does your cow kick? Do not fly into a passion and pound her with a handspike, or trim her with a gad or a cow-hide.
ref: c. 1844, Prairie Farmer:
text: Twain finds his voice after a short search for it and when he impels it forward it is a good, strong, steady voice in harness until the driver becomes absent-minded, when it stops to rest, and then the gad must be used to drive it on again.
ref: 1885 December 17, Detroit Free Press:
text: Our thrifty dame, Mally, she rises soon at morn, She goes and tells the master I'm pulling up the corn; He clicks up the oxen gad and sair belabours me, For I'm Robin Spraggon's auld grey mare, ae how he's guided me!
ref: 1888, “Robin Spraggon's Auld Grey Mare”, in The Monthly Chronicle of North-country Lore and Legend, page 171:
text: On the morning of Palm-Sunday, the gamekeeper, some servant on the estate, brings with him a large gad or whip, with a long thong; the stock is made of the mountain ash, […]
ref: 1908, Folklore Society (Great Britain), Publications, page 288:
hyponyms: goad
glosses: A goad, a sharp-pointed rod for driving cattle, horses, etc, or one with a whip or thong on the end for the same purpose.
examples: text: And we'll prepare our limber gads,
Lang lines, and braw brass wheels;
ref: 1836, A Collection of Right Merrie Garlands for North Country Anglers, page 4:
text: Seek out thy tackle, thy creel and thy gad.
ref: 1876, Armstrong, Wanny Blossoms, page 33:
text: Woe to the lad / without a rowen-tree gad.
ref: 1879, William Henderson, Folklore Society (Great Britain), Notes on the Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders:
text: We'll splice oor gads nigh Barra Mill, Beneath yon auld birk tree.
ref: 1896, Proudlock, Borderland Muse, page 268:
glosses: A rod or stick, such as a fishing rod or a measuring rod.
examples: text: I will go get a leaf of brass, / And with a gad of steel will write these words.
ref: c. 1588–1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:
text: Frank was able to keep his eyes open long enough to check his bed with a miner's gad and douse the electric lamp
ref: 2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage, published 2007, page 327:
topics: business
mining
glosses: A pointed metal tool for breaking or chiselling rock.
examples: text: they sette uppon hym and drew oute their swerdys to have slayne hym – but there wolde no swerde byghte on hym more than uppon a gadde of steele, for the Hyghe Lorde which he served, He hym preserved.
ref: 1485, Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, Book XV:
text: Flemish steel […] some in bars and some in gads.
ref: 1677–1683, Joseph Moxon, “(please specify the page)”, in Mechanick Exercises, or The Doctrine of Handy-Works, […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: […] Joseph Moxon, published 1678–1683, →OCLC:
text: When a man received sentence of death, he was put upon the gad as it was called, that is, secured to the bar of iron in the manner mentioned in the text. The practice subsisted in Edinburgh […]
ref: 1836, Walter Scott, Guy Mannering, Or, The Astrologer: With the Author's Last Notes and Additions, page 372:
glosses: A metal bar.
examples: text: Twice a day a 'gad' of iron, i.e., a bloom weighing 1 cwt. was produced, which took from six to seven hours.
ref: 1957, H.R. Schubert, History of the British Iron and Steel Industry, page 146:
topics: engineering
metallurgy
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
glosses: An indeterminate measure of metal produced by a furnace, sometimes equivalent to a bloom weighing around 100 pounds.
examples: text: Sometimes we see the knuckles ornamented with gads or gadlings.
ref: 1840, Charles Henry Hartshorne, An Endeavor to Classify the Sepulchral Remains in Northamptonshire, Or, a Discourse on Funeral Monuments in that County: Delivered Before the Members of the Religious and Useful Knowledge Society, at Northampton, page 35:
text: His gauntlets have embroidered cuffs; there are gads or gadlings on the fingers.
ref: 1842, Ecclesiological Society, Illustrations of Monumental Brasses ..., page 70:
text: Another curious device was that of arming the knuckles of the gauntlets with spikes (gads or gadlings), by which they became weapons as well as defences.
ref: 1858, Edward Cave, The Gentleman's Magazine: Or, Monthly Intelligencer: Volume the first [-fifth], for the year 1731 [-1735] ..., page 215:
text: On both finger joints are gads, which are beautifully faceted and brought to a point.
ref: 1992, Sir Guy Francis Laking, A Record of European Armour and Arms Through Seven Centuries, page 214:
synonyms: gadling
spike
glosses: A spike on a gauntlet; a gadling.
Derived terms: gadder
gadfly
gadsman
Related terms: english: etymologically unrelated
translation: etymologically unrelated
word: Baal-gad