1723 J. Lewis Hist. Isle Tenet (1736) 6 Through these chalky cliffs the inhabitants whose Farms adjoin to them have cut several gates or ways into the sea..But these gates or passages they have been forced to fill up in the time of War.

a1805 A. Carlyle Autobiogr. (1860) iv. 163 The three ships which took through the gat or opening between sand-banks, were almost out of sight before we ventured to sail.

a1825 R. Forby Vocab. E. Anglia (1830) Gat, an opening in the great sand-bank which lies at the back of the Yarmouth Roads.

1847 Ld. G. Bentinck in Croker Papers (1884) III. xxv. 143 Louis Philippe sent all his war steamers to tug the French ships through the gat of Gibraltar.

1885 L. Jackson Our Caughmawagas in Egypt 17 I had to use the tow-line at one place where there was a ‘gate’ (or channel), as we say in Canada.

1904 ‘No. 1500’ Life in Sing Sing xiii. 248/2 Gatt, a revolver.

1920 I. E. Ostrander How many Cards? 8 I found a gat on him that's like a toy cap pistol compared to that gun lying there.

1928 E. Wallace Gunner xviii. 146 Why was a pistol called a gat, he wondered. Probably it was an abbreviation of gatling, and was obviously an Americanism.

1931 P. G. Wodehouse Big Money xiii. 283 He produced the gat..and poised it in an unsteady but resolute grasp. ‘Hands up!’ he said.

1966 Punch 1 June 792/3 The dive he took us to..was as bad as anything Akim Tamaroff ever ran through with his gat blazing.