Chapter Giants' War with Jove to Giles Overreach of G by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

in bocca."
   French: "A cheval donné il ne faut pas regarder aux dents."
   Spanish: "A cavall dato no le mirem el diénte."

Gig (g hard). A whipping top, made like a Ñ.

"Thou disputest like an infant. Go, whip thy gig." - Shakespeare: Love's Labour's Lost, v. 1.

Gig-lamps Spectacles. Gig-lamps are the "spectacles" of a gig. (See Verdant Green.)

Gig-manity Respectability. A word invented by Carlyle. A witness in the trial of John Thurtell said, "I always thought him [Thurtell] a respectable man." And being asked by the judge what he meant, replied, "He [Thurtell] kept a gig."

"A princess of the blood, yet whose father had sold his inexpressibles ... in a word, Gigmanity disgigged. - Carlyle: The Diamond Necklace, chap. v.

Giggle (g hard). Have you found a giggle's nest? A question asked in Norfolk when anyone laughs immoderately and senselessly. The meaning is, "Have you found a nest of romping girls that you laugh so?" Giglet is still in common use in the West of England for a giddy, romping, Tom-boy girl, and in Salop a flighty person is called a "giggle." (See Gape's-Nest.)

Gil Blas (g soft). The hero of Le Sage's novel of the same name. Timid, but audacious; well-disposed, but easily led astray; shrewd, but easily gulled by practising on his vanity; good-natured, but without moral principle. The tale, according to one account, is based on Matteo Aleman's Spanish romance, called the Life of Guzman; others maintain that the original was the comic romance entitled Relaciones de la Vida del Escudero Marcos de Obregon.

Gilbertines (3 syl., g hard). A religious order founded in the twelfth century by St. Gilbert of Lincolnshire.

Gild the Pill (To). To do something to make a disagreeable task less offensive, as a pill is gilded to make it less offensive to the sight and taste. Children's powders are hidden in jam, and authors are "damned with faint praise."

Gilded Chamber (The). The House of Lords.

"Mr. Rowland Winn is now Lord St. Oswald, and after years spent in the Lower House he has retired to the calm of the gilded chamber." - Newspaper paragraph, June 26th, 1885.

Gilderoy' (3 syl., g hard). A famous robber, who robbed Cardinal Richelieu and Oliver Cromwell. There was a Scotch robber of the same name in the reign of Queen Mary. Both were noted for their handsome persons, and both were hanged.

Gilderoy's Kite Higher than Gilderoy's kite. To be hung higher than Gilderoy's kite is to be punished more severely than the very worst criminal. The greater the crime, the higher the gallows, was at one time a practical legal axiom. Haman, it will be remembered, was hanged on a very high gallows. The gallows of Montrose was 30 feet high. The ballad says: -

"Of Gilderoy sae fraid they were
They bound him mickle strong,
Till Edenburrow they led him thair
And on a gallows hong;
They hong him high abone the rest,
He was so trim a boy ...."

   He was "hong abone the rest" of the criminals because his crimes were deemed to be more heinous. So high he hung he looked like "a kite" in the clouds.

Gildippe (in Jerusalem Delivered). Wife of Edward, an English baron. She accompanied her husband to the Holy War, and performed prodigies of valour (book ix.). Both she and her husband were slain by Solyman (book xx.).

Giles (1 syl., g soft). The "farmer's boy" in Bloomfield's poem so called.

Giles (St.). Patron saint of cripples. The tradition is that the king of France, hunting in the desert, accidentally wounded the hermit in the knee; and the hermit, that he might the better mortify the flesh, refusing to be