gall
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: anatomy
engineering
medicine
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
physiology
sciences
technical
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.
Inflected forms:
form: galls
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: galls
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: galling
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: galled
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: galled
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: Impudence or brazenness; temerity; chutzpah.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
examples: “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.
Prichard, while keeping school, had the unmitigated gall to teach Greek, although he had never studied the subject.
In July 1938, that was sufficient to call down contempt and hatred on us, and brand us as men of unmitigated gall.
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.
"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."
gloss: A gallbladder.
pos: noun
tags: archaic
countable
examples: 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.
gloss: Bile, especially that of an animal; the greenish, profoundly bitter-tasting fluid found in bile ducts and gall bladders, structures associated with the liver.
pos: noun
tags: archaic
uncountable
gloss: Great misery or physical suffering, likened to the bitterest-tasting of substances.
pos: noun
tags: figuratively
uncountable
examples: 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;
The stage its ancient fury thus let fall, / And comedy diverted without gall.
[…] I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall […]
gloss: To chafe, to rub or subject to friction; to create a sore on the skin.
pos: verb
tags: ergative
examples: […] he went awkwardly in these clothes at first: wearing the drawers was very awkward to him, and the sleeves of the waistcoat galled his shoulders and the inside of his arms; but a little easing them where he complained they hurt him, and using himself to them, he took to them at length very well.
I heard him curse his own misery, while he hugged the chains that galled him:
But, alas! the heart once bruised and galled recovers itself but slowly, and it was many minutes before the softest words the eloquent lover could shape to sound sufficed to dry those burning tears, […].
Had Ninus not made offer of a high reward when Nineveh should be builded at the end of two short years? Ah, here the sandal galled!
Edward Churchill still attended to his work in a hopeless mechanical manner like a sleep-walker who walks safely on a well-known round. But his Roman collar galled him, his cossack stifled him, his biretta was as uncomfortable as a merry-andrew's cap and bells.
gloss: To bother or trouble.
pos: verb
tags: figuratively
transitive
examples: It is as lack of breath or bread: life hath no grief more galling.
I went below, and did what I could for my wound; it pained me a good deal, and still bled freely; but it was neither deep nor dangerous, nor did it greatly gall me when I used my arm.
gloss: To harass, to harry, often with the intent to cause injury.
pos: verb
tags: figuratively
transitive
examples: The disposition for these detachments is as follows – Morgans corps, to gain the enemy’s right flank; Maxwells brigade to hang on their left. Brigadier Genl. Scott is now marching with a very respectable detachment destined to gall the enemys left flank and rear.
However he had concealed it from the eyes of others, the haughty ire of Margaret must have galled him in his deepest soul.
As Bactria had pressed upon Assyria's force below, so now Prince Menon galled the Bactrians from his vantage point above, destroying them with arrows and with slings, with down-flung stones and the trunks of fallen trees.
gloss: To exasperate.
pos: verb
tags: figuratively
transitive
examples: Metrinko was hungry, but he was galled by how self-congratulatory his captors seemed, how generous and noble and proudly Islamic.
gloss: To cause pitting on a surface being cut from the friction between the two surfaces exceeding the bond of the material at a point.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: Improper cooling and a dull milling cutter on titanium can gall the surface.
gloss: To scoff; to jeer.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
obsolete
rare
examples: I have seen you gleeking and galling at this gentleman twice or thrice. You thought, because he could not speak English in the native garb, he could not therefore handle an English cudgel
Derived words: gall and wormwood
gallbladder
gall-less
gallless
gall-of-the-earth
gallstone
gally
galsome
oxgall
scroll-gall
vent one's gall
begall
galler
Translations: