gardyloo
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɡɑːdɪˈluː/
rhymes: -uː
Forms: form: gardyloos
form: gardy loo
Etymology: From Edinburgh Scots gardyloo, from a corruption of medieval French gardez l'eau (“mind the water”).
Senses: examples: text: What do the polished inhabitants of Carrubber's close care for all the taunts that can be uttered by the mouths of all the tobacco-chewing, bacon-eating bagmen who chatter no intelligible language of any country, about "gardy loos," and Caledonian cremonas?
ref: 1828 October, “Bath. A Satire.”, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, volume XXIV, page 462:
text: Notwithstanding the repeated proclamations of successive magistrates against depositing filth on the streets and closes, and against throwing soil and refuse over the windows, – emphasised as these proclamations were by threats of fines, imprisonment, the pillory, whipping, and banishment, – the practice was continued far into the last century; and contemporary writers represent the sounding of ten o'clock from the steeple of St Giles' to have been the signal for a general and simultaneous discharge from the windows of every house, amid a chorus of "Gardyloos."
ref: 1865, James David Marwick, Sketch of the History of the High Constables of Edinburgh: With Notes on the Early Watching, Cleaning, and other Police Arrangements of the City, Edinburgh: Printed for private circulation [by J. Grieg and Son], →OCLC, page 74:
text: In many of the less developed areas, rubbish is left on the streets, and dirty water is still flung from the windows without so much as a "gardyloo."
ref: 1964, Charles Abrams, Man's Struggle for Shelter in an Urbanizing World, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, →OCLC, page 66:
text: […] I began to round up the scattered empties which, without so much as a ‘gardyloo’, I chucked from the window into the backcourt.
ref: 1992, Jeff Torrington, Swing Hammer Swing!, London: Secker & Warburg, ISBN 978-0-436-53120-0; republished by Harvill Secker, 2012, ISBN 978-1-84655-673-9, pages 231–232
text: Granted, the balmy temperatures of these climes may have contributed to the general moral collapse, but the erotic pandemonium of gardyloos, shrieks, halloos, yodels, screams, and fullthroated bellowings cannot be blamed on the weather, and must stand forever as a blot on this otherwise handsomely managed season.
ref: 2004, Gilbert Sorrentino, The Moon in Its Flight: Stories, Minneapolis, Minn.: Coffee House Press, published 2012, →ISBN:
glosses: A cry of "gardyloo".
examples: text: I believe the auld women wad hae greed, for Lucky Mac-Phail sent down the lass to tell my friend Mrs Crombie that she had made the gardyloo out of the wrang window, out of respect for twa Highlandmen that were speaking Gaelic in the close below the right ane. […]
Mrs Glass, who had been in long and anxious expectation, now rushed, full of eager curiosity and open-mouthed interrogation, upon our heroine, who was positively unable to sustain the overwhelming cataract of her questions, which burst forth with the subliminity of a grand gardyloo […]
ref: 1818, Walter Scott, “The Heart of Midlothian”, Tales of My Landlord: Second Series, Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Company; James Ballantyne and Co.; republished in The Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott: Containing ... Tales of My Landlord. The Monastery., Paris: A. & W. Galignani, 1827, volume II, pages 304 and 348
text: Siobhan Clarke looked like she'd stepped under a gardyloo bucket. She tried not to show it, and smiled whenever she saw him looking in her direction, but there was definitely something up with her.
ref: 1993, Ian Rankin, The Black Book: An Inspector Rebus Novel, London: Orion Books, ISBN 978-1-85797-080-7; republished by Orion Books, 2011, ISBN 978-0-7528-8357-1
glosses: An act of discarding waste or some other substance from a height. Also attributive and figurative.
examples: text: Released but a few weeks before Gremlins, this film drew only foreshadowings of concern that spiraled up into hysterical gardyloos when Gremlins made its debut.
ref: 1985, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, volume 68, page 87:
text: And now, to be usherhandled up the aisle, my ear pincered excruciatingly, my dear sweet Granny kvetching along behind, intoning half-Yiddish gardyloos about my certain future as either a demented hunchbacked bell-ringer, or a Cossack love-slave ... how ignominous!
ref: 1989, Harlan Ellison, “Crying ‘Water!’ in a Crowded Theater”, Harlan Ellison's Watching, Los Angeles, Calif.: Underwood–Miller, ISBN 978-0-88733-067-4; republished by Open Road Media, 2015, ISBN 978-1-4976-0411-7
text: For all its apocalyptic doomsaying, its frequent pointing with alarm, its gardyloos of caution, the literature of imagination has ever and always promoted an ethic of good manners and kindness via its viewpoint characters.
ref: 1990, Asimov's Science Fiction, volume 14, page 61:
glosses: Caution, warning.
Related terms: loo