Chapter Gamaliel. to Gangway of G by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Gammon (g hard). A corruption of gamene. Stuff to impose upon one's credulity; chaff. (Anglo-Saxon, gamen, scoffing; our game, as "You are making game of me.")
   Gammon (g hard) means the leg, not the buttock. (French, jambon, the leg, jambe; Italian, gamba.)

Gammut or Gamut g (hard). It is gamma ut, "ut" being the first word in the Guido-von-Arrezzo scale of ut, re mi, fa, sol, la. In the eleventh century the ancient scale was extended a note below the Greek proslambanomy note (our A), the first space of the bass staff. The new note was termed g (gamma), and when "ut" was substituted by Arrezzo the "supernumerary" note was called gamma or ut, or shortly gamm' ut - i.e. "G ut." The gammut, therefore, properly means the diatonic scale beginning in the bass clef with "G."

Gamp (Mrs.), or Sarah Gamp (g hard). A monthly nurse, famous for her bulky umbrella and perpetual reference to Mrs. Harris, a purely imaginary person, whose opinions always confirmed her own. (Dickens: Martin Chuzzlewit.)

"Mrs. Harris, I says to her, if I could afford to lay out all my fellow creeturs for nothink, I would gladly do it. Such is the love I bear `em."

   Punch caricatures the Standard as "Mrs. Sarah Gamp," a little woman with an enormous bonnet and her characteristic umbrella.
   A Sarah Gamp, or Mrs. Gamp. A big, pawky umbrella, so called from Sarah Gamp. (See above.)
   In France it is called un Robinson, from Robinson Crusoe's umbrella. (Defoe.)

Gamps and Harrises Workhouse nurses, real or supposititious. (See Gamp.)

"Mr. Gathorne Hardy is to look after the Gamps and Harrises of Lambeth and the Strand." - The Daily Telegraph.

Ganabim The island of thieves and plagiarists. So called from the Hebrew ganab (a thief). (Rabelais: Pantagruel, iv. 66.)

Gander (g hard). What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Both must be treated exactly alike. Applesauce is just as good for one as the other. (Anglo-Saxon gós, related to gons and gans. The d and r of gan-a are merely euphonic; the a being the masculine suffix. Thus han-a was the masculine of hen. Latin, anser.)

Gander-cleugh Folly cliff; that mysterious land where anyone who makes a "goose of himself" takes up his temporary residence. The hypothetical Jedediah Cleishbotham, who edited the Tales of My Landlord, lived there, as Sir Walter Scott assures us.

Gander-month Those four weeks when the "monthly nurse" rules the house with despotic sway, and the master is made a goose of.

Ganelon (g hard). Count of Mayence, one of Charlemagne's paladins, the "Judas" of knights. His castle was built on the Blocksberg, the loftiest peak of the Hartz mountains. Jealousy of Roland made him a traitor; and in order to destroy his rival, he planned with Marsillus, the Moorish king, the attack of Roncesvallës. He was six and a-half feet high, with glaring eyes and fiery hair; he loved solitude, was very taciturn, disbelieved in the existence of moral good, and never had a friend. His name is a by-word for a traitor of the basest sort.

"Have you not held me at such a distance from your counsels, as if I were the most faithless spy since the days of Ganelon?" - Sir Walter Scott: The Abbot, chap. xxiv.

"You would have thought him [Ganelon] one of Attila's Huns, rather than one of the paladins of Charlemagne's court." - Croquemitaine, iii.

Ganem (g hard), having incurred the displeasure of Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid, effected his escape by taking the place of a slave, who was carrying on his head dishes from his own table. (Arabian Nights' Entertainments.)