gewgawn.

Etymology: Etymology and primary sense uncertain; a reduplicated formation such as is commonly found in words of contemptuous signification. If the original application be to a musical instrument, the word may have been invented as an imitation of the sound; compare Dutch giegagen to ‘hee-haw’, bray. On the other hand, if the primary notion was that of ‘a gaudy object’, the suggestion may have come < gaw v., with its variants or synonyms gow, gew. It is not impossible that the word as applied to a musical instrument may be an independent formation. The modern Dutch giegauw, recorded once in the sense ‘flourish, scalloped border’, and now preserved only in a phrase of obscure origin belonging to the game of merels, is supposed by the Dutch lexicographers to be an adoption of the English word. The commonly accepted view has been that the earliest form, which is written giuegoue (Ancren Riwle) should be read as givegove , and that the word is a reduplicated formation from the root of give v. On this supposition it would be identical with giff-gaff n. and the Middle Dutch ghiveghave, of which a single example is known. But if this were the etymology, the initial would have been ȝ, not g, in the southern texts of the Ancren Riwle (unless indeed these texts have been transcribed from an original in northern dialect). Further, the proposed explanation does not account plausibly for the recorded senses, and it is doubtful whether the assumed development of givegove into gugaw (15th cent.), guygaw (16th cent.), gewgaw, is phonetically possible. The probability is that the u in giuegoue is a vowel.