gouge
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɡaʊd͡ʒ/
rhymes: -aʊdʒ
Forms: form: gouges
form: gouging
form: gouged
form: gouged
Etymology: From Middle English gouge (“chisel with concave blade; gouge”), from Old French gouge, goi (“gouge”), from Late Latin goia, gubia, gulbia (“chisel; piercer”), borrowed from Gaulish *gulbiā, from Proto-Celtic *gulbā, *gulbi, *gulbīnos (“beak, bill”). The English word is cognate with Italian gorbia, gubbia (“ferrule”), Old Breton golb, Old Irish gulba (“beak”), Portuguese goiva, Scottish Gaelic gilb (“chisel”), Spanish gubia (“chisel, gouge”), Welsh gylf (“beak; pointed instrument”), gylyf (“sickle”).
The verb is derived from the noun.
Senses: examples: text: Japanese and Chinese printers used to gouge characters in wood.
text: Imperfect examples of concave shells are to be seen in the salient of El Capitan, which is itself an imperfect dome, not wholly massive throughout, that has been vigorously gouged by the Yosemite Glacier.
ref: 1950, François É[mile] Matthes, “The Domes”, in Fritiof Fryxell, editor, The Incomparable Valley: A Geologic Interpretation of the Yosemite, Berkeley; Los Angeles, Calif.; London: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 127:
text: Gouges [...] are made of steel that is curved to varying degrees to "gouge" out excess wood.
ref: 1977 January, Penelope Angell, “Handmade with Care: Woodcarving”, in John A. Linkletter, editor, Popular Mechanics, volume 147, number 1, New York, N.Y.: The Hearst Corporation, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 94, column 2:
text: [W]e simply sit in silence and let the day's events roll around the room like farts in a school cafeteria. Dad breaks the spell when he gets up to retrieve his wood and starts gouging it for all he's worth.
ref: 2015, Kathleen Cook Waldron, chapter 12, in Kathy Stinson, editor, Between Shadows, Regina, Sask.: Coteau Books, →ISBN, page 48:
synonyms: engrave
grave
incise
glosses: To make a groove, hole, or mark in by scooping with or as if with a gouge.
examples: text: The company has no competition, so it tends to gouge its customers.
text: [M]any hospitals have essentially abandoned any serious effort to raise funds from donors. They could, like universities, conduct fund-raising campaigns and establish endowments to cover the shortfall caused by widespread fraud (i.e., the false promise by government and insurance to pay patients' medical expenses), but instead they mercilessly gouge their uninsured patients.
ref: 2008 November, William G. White, “The Physician’s Fee: A Historical Reflection”, in Eugene F. Diamond, editor, The Linacre Quarterly: Journal of the Catholic Medical Association, volume 75, number 4, Wynnewood, Pa.: Catholic Medical Association, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 299:
text: Women like Rachel sail through life wrapping men around their little fingers and gouging them for everything they've got.
ref: 2014, Mia Ross, Sugar Plum Season, New York, N.Y.: Love Inspired Books, Harlequin, →ISBN, page 120:
synonyms: defraud
swindle
glosses: To cheat or impose upon; in particular, to charge an unfairly or unreasonably high price.
examples: text: The recorded cases in which the constituents of the joint were removed at different times, and those also in which the bones or portions of the bones were gouged away, do not by any means afford satisfactory results.
ref: 1863 February 7, Henry Hancock, “On the Superiority of [François] Chopart’s Operation and Excision of the Ankle in All Cases Admitting of Their Performance”, in James G. Wakley, editor, The Lancet: A Journal of British and Foreign Medicine, Physiology, Surgery, Chemistry, Public Health, Criticism, and News, volume I, number VI (number 2058), London: Published by George Fall, […], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 143, column 1:
text: In milling, a blade with this irregularity in front slope causes the cutter to drag on one side and gouge on the other.
ref: 1909 January 15, Wilfred Lewis, W[illia]m H. Taylor, “The Development of a High-speed Milling Cutter, with Inserted Blades, for High-powered Milling Machines”, in Herbert Page, Armistead Cay, editors, Page’s Weekly: An Illustrated Newspaper Devoted to the Engineering, Shipbuilding Iron and Steel Trades, volume XIV, number 227, London: [Herbert Page], →OCLC, page 112, column 1:
text: He tried to clinch and gouge, but another right hook to the jaw sent him down and out.
ref: 1930 November, Robert E[rvin] Howard, “Champ of the Forecastle”, in Jack O’Sullivan, editor, Fight Stories, volume 3, number 6, New York, N.Y.: Fight Stories, Inc., →OCLC; republished in Paul Herman, editor, Waterfront Fists and Others, Holicong, Pa.: Wildside Press, 2003, →ISBN, page 155:
text: For some time, Christian missionaries had been falsely accused of kidnaping Chinese children, gouging out their eyes, and killing them.
ref: 2014, Eunice V. Johnson, “Shaping China’s Reform Movements, 1891–1910”, in Carol Lee Hamrin, editor, Timothy Richard’s Vision: Education and Reform in China, 1880–1910 (Studies in Chinese Christianity), Eugene, Or.: Pickwick Publications, Wipf and Stock Publishers, →ISBN, footnote 28, page 63:
glosses: To dig or scoop (something) out with or as if with a gouge; in particular, to use a thumb to push or try to push the eye (of a person) out of its socket.
examples: text: Blocks are alſo pieces of wood belonging to ſhips, in which the ſhivers, or ſheaves, of pullies are placed, and wherein the running ropes go. [...] The blocks are then jambed up edgeways with wedges in a clave, and the ſheave-holes are made in this manner: the length and breadth are firſt gouged out, and holes are bored half way through the block, along the part gouged out, with an augre of the ſize of the ſheave-hole; then the ſheave-hole is gouged and bored on the oppoſite ſide in the ſame manner, ſo as to meet the oppoſite holes.
ref: 1819, “Blocks”, in Abraham Rees, editor, The Cyclopædia; or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature. [...] In Thirty-nine Volumes, volume IV, London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, […], →OCLC:
glosses: To use a gouge.
Derived terms: word: antigouging
word: eye-gougingly
word: gougee
word: gouge out
word: gouger
word: gouging
word: price gouging
word: price gouge
word: regouge
word: ungouged