gall
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɡɔːl/
ipa: /ɡɑl/
rhymes: -ɔːl
homophone: Gaul
Forms: form: galls
Etymology: From Middle English galle, from Old English ġealla, galla, from Proto-West Germanic *gallā, from Proto-Germanic *gallǭ.
The figurative senses (e.g., impudence, brazenness, chutzpah) are related to the literal sense (i.e., bile) via the lasting linguocultural effects of humorism, which governed Western medicine for many centuries before the advent of scientific medicine.
Related to Dutch gal, German Galle, Swedish galle, galla, Ancient Greek χολή (kholḗ). Also remotely related with yellow and gold.
Senses: examples: text: “Durn ye!” he cried. “I’ll lam ye! Get offen here. I knows ye. Yer one o’ that gang o’ bums that come here last night, an’ now you got the gall to come back beggin’ for food, eh? I’ll lam ye!” and he raised the gun to his shoulder.
ref: 1917, Edgar Rice Burroughs, chapter 6, in The Oakdale Affair:
text: Prichard, while keeping school, had the unmitigated gall to teach Greek, although he had never studied the subject.
ref: 1891, Exercises of class day of the senior class, Tuesday, June 23, 1891, page 33:
text: In July 1938, that was sufficient to call down contempt and hatred on us, and brand us as men of unmitigated gall.
ref: 1944, Teheran: Our Path in War and Peace, page 55:
text: It requires the cunning of a chess master, the planning of a field marshal, the adroitness and polish of a premier of France, or, failing these, the sheer, unmitigated gall of your door-to-door salesman.
ref: 1962, How to live with a calculating cat, page 47:
text: "Also, as apologetic as you were for occupying my time, which I had hoped to spend with my daughter, you used about twice as many words as you needed to, and wasted an entire paragraph complaining about your colleagues. I went back to the SCP-079 file — Supervisor Valis would have had the thing decommissioned years ago if it weren't for your blatant technofetishism. Yet, you have the gall to characterize the Foundation's ongoing political interventions and military operations as squabbles."
ref: 2022 October 18, Placeholder McD, “SCP-7579 [offset 1]”, in SCP Foundation, archived from the original on 20 Dec 2024:
glosses: Impudence or brazenness; temerity; chutzpah.
examples: text: He shall flee from the iron weapon and the bow of steel shall strike him through. It is drawn and cometh out of the body; yea, the glittering sword cometh out of his gall.
ref: 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Job 20:24–25:
topics: anatomy
medicine
sciences
glosses: A gallbladder.
topics: medicine
physiology
sciences
glosses: Bile, especially that of an animal; the greenish, profoundly bitter-tasting fluid found in bile ducts and gall bladders, structures associated with the liver.
examples: text: Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood;
ref: 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Deuteronomy 29:18:
text: The stage its ancient fury thus let fall, / And comedy diverted without gall.
ref: 1683, John Dryden, The Art of Poetry:
text: […] I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall […]
ref: 1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], chapter XIV, in Wuthering Heights: […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […], →OCLC:
glosses: Great misery or physical suffering, likened to the bitterest-tasting of substances.
Derived terms: gall and wormwood
gallbladder
gall-less
gallless
gall-of-the-earth
gallstone
gally
galsome
oxgall
scroll-gall
vent one's gall