gall1
/ɡɔːl
/noun [mass noun]
1Bold and impudent behaviour: the bank had the gall to demand a fee...
- I can't believe we have such ungrateful whiners in this place that have the hide and gall to call themselves Aussies.
- I have been in politics a while - not long enough, obviously - but I have been in politics a while and I have seen some examples of impertinence, cheek, and gall, but that last speech beats them all.
- What a hat full of horsefeathers; what a hoary hunk of chutzpah; what a grotesque, galloping glob of gall this guy is!
Synonyms
impudence, insolence, impertinence, cheek, cheekiness, nerve, audacity, brazenness, effrontery, temerity, presumption, presumptuousness, brashness, shamelessness, pertness, boldness;
bad manners, rudeness, impoliteness
informal brass neck, brass, neck, face, chutzpah, cockiness
British informal sauce, sauciness
Scottish informal snash
North American informal sass, sassiness, nerviness
informal, dated hide
British informal, dated crust
rare malapertness, procacity, assumption
2The contents of the gall bladder; bile (proverbial for its bitterness).In central Ontario, eight species of parasitoids and a Periclistus inquiline are associated with this gall....
- And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull, They gave Him Vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when He had tasted thereof, He would not drink.
- The result of Raychel's beating is directly carried over to the Roman soldier forcing Jesus to drink gall.
Synonyms
acrimony, resentment, rancour, sourness, acerbity, asperity;
bitterness, bile, spleen, malice, spite, spitefulness, malignity, venom, vitriol, poison, malevolence, virulence, nastiness, animosity, antipathy, hostility, enmity, bad blood, ill feeling, ill will, animus
literary choler
2.1 [count noun] An animal’s gall bladder: the trade in animal parts such as bear galls...
- They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
- Whoever killed Russell's bears was not out poaching gall, Pavel believed.
- Dried and sold as an aphrodisiac and cure-all in Asia, Russia, and North America, bear gall has long been treasure for poachers.
2.2Used to refer to something bitter or cruel: accept life’s gall without blaming somebody else...
- It's always a bit crushing when you lose something that was yours but there is a special bitter gall when that thing is logging your progress in a 10,000 a day stepathon.
- How quickly I fall back to my evil ways when I force You to drink the bitter gall of mankind's sin - instead of refreshing water that will temporarily soothe Your thirsty and battered body.
Origin
Old English gealla (denoting bile), of Germanic origin; related to Dutch gal, German Galle 'gall', from an Indo-European root shared by Greek kholē and Latin fel 'bile'.
yellow from Old English:
As with other colour words such as auburn and brown, the root of yellow probably referred to a wider range of colours than the modern word. It shares an ancestor with gold (see golden), but is also related to gall (Old English), bile (mid 17th century), and the final element of melancholy, all of which derive from the greenish colour of bile. The yellow egg yolk (Old English), which could be spelt yelk into the 17th century, was also related to yellow. In the 17th century yellow rather than green was the colour of jealousy, possibly with the idea of a jealous person being ‘jaundiced’ or bitter. The word jaundice (Middle English) is from Old French jaune ‘yellow’, from the symptomatic yellowish complexion. Yellow is now associated with cowardice, a link that began in the 1850s in the USA. Since the 1920s a coward has been said to be yellow-bellied or a yellow-belly.
Rhymes
gall2
/ɡɔːl/noun
1 [mass noun] Annoyance or resentment: he imagined Linda’s gall as she found herself still married and not rich...
- Learning that his quarry had given him a slip a glowering devil seemed to rage within the king's heart, raising dark and savage gall.
Synonyms
irritation, irritant, annoyance, vexation, pest, nuisance, provocation, bother, torment, plague, source of vexation, source of irritation, source of annoyance, thorn in one's side/flesh
informal aggravation, peeve, pain, pain in one's neck, bind, bore, headache, hassle
Scottish informal nyaff, skelf
North American informal pain in the butt, nudnik, burr under someone's saddle
Australian/New Zealand informal nark
2A sore on the skin made by chafing: saddle galls
Synonyms
sore, ulcer, ulceration, canker;
abrasion, scrape, scratch, graze, chafe
verb [with object]
1Make (someone) feel annoyed or resentful: it galled him to have to sit impotently in silence...
- It galls me that some people are trying to take full credit for the new hospital now.
- Yes indeed, and clearly that's galling the people who are holding those three Italian hostages, originally four.
- What is galling most people about the situation is that it was instigated by our own Minister who seems to be blaming everyone from his own Fisheries Officers, Europe and fishermen's so called lack of flexibility.
Synonyms
irritate, annoy, vex, make angry, make cross, anger, exasperate, irk, pique, put out, displease, get/put someone's back up, antagonize, get on someone's nerves, rub up the wrong way, ruffle, ruffle someone's feathers, make someone's hackles rise, raise someone's hackles;
infuriate, madden, drive to distraction, goad, provoke
informal aggravate, peeve, hassle, miff, rile, nettle, needle, get, get to, bug, hack off, get under someone's skin, get in someone's hair, get up someone's nose, put someone's nose out of joint, get someone's goat, rattle someone's cage, get someone's dander up, drive mad/crazy, drive round the bend/twist, drive up the wall, make someone see red
British informal wind up, nark, get across, get on someone's wick, give someone the hump
North American informal tee off, tick off, burn up, rankle, ride, gravel
New Zealand informal rark
informal, dated give someone the pip
rare exacerbate, hump, rasp
2Make sore by rubbing: the straps that galled their shoulders
Synonyms
chafe, abrade, rub (against), rub painfully, rub raw, scrape, graze, skin, scratch, rasp, bark, fret
rare excoriate
Origin
Old English gealle 'sore on a horse', perhaps related to gall1; superseded in Middle English by forms from Middle Low German or Middle Dutch.
gall3
/ɡɔːl/noun
1An abnormal growth formed in response to the presence of insect larvae, mites, or fungi on plants and trees, especially oaks: a single grub feeds on its gall for two years before emerging the witch hazel had developed leaf galls...
- In early spring, these aphids form pouch-shaped galls on the hybrids' leaves; living and breeding within the galls, the insects feed on the trees' nutritious sap stream.
- Herbivorous attack was estimated by the number of attacked leaves and percentage of leaf area damaged, while gall-forming insect attacks were estimated from the number of leaves with galls and number of galls per individual plant.
- The midge is an ephemeral 2-3 mm insect whose larva induces a gall on young unfurled S. viminalis leaves.
1.1 [as modifier] Denoting insects or mites that produce galls: gall flies...
- I chose gall insects, made drawings and sent in specimens with my essay.
- However, this parasitoid was completely absent from all sampled gall beetle populations.
- To combat it, agricultural agencies began to introduce gall flies of the genus Urophoro in the 1970s.
Origin
Middle English: via Old French from Latin galla.