Chapter Gauntgrim to Geese of G by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

of her daughter-in-law (Lady Catherine Howard), exclaimed, "By the blessed sacrament, this gay girl will beggar my son Henry." (See above.)

"What eyleth you? Some gay gurl, God it wot,
Hath brought you thus upon the very trot"
(i.e. put you on your high horse, or into a passion). Chaucer: Canterbury Tales, 3,767.

Gaze (1 syl., g hard). To stand at gaze. To stand in doubt what to do. A term in forestry. When a stag first hears the hounds it stands dazed, looking all round, and in doubt what to do.
   Heralds call a stag which is represented full- faced, a "stag at gaze."

"The American army in the central states remained wholly at gaze." - Lord Mahon: History.

"As the poor frighted deer, that stands at gaze,
Wildly determining which way to fly."
   Shakespeare: Rape of Lucrece, 1149-50.

Gaze-hound (See Lyme-Hound .)

Gazette (2 syl., g hard). A newspaper. The first newspapers were issued in Venice by the Government, and came out in manuscript once a month, during the war of 1563 between the Venetians and Turks. The intelligence was read publicly in certain places, and the fee for hearing it read was one gazetta (a Venetian coin, somewhat less than a farthing in value).
    The first official English newspaper, called The Oxford Gazette, was published in 1642, at Oxford, where the Court was held. On the removal of the Court to London, the name was changed to The London Gazette. The name was revived in 1665, during the Great Fire. Now the official Gazette, published every Tuesday and Friday, contains announcements of pensions, promotions, bankruptcies, dissolutions of partnerships, etc. (See Newspapers.)

Gazetted (g hard). Published in the London Gazette, an official newspaper.

Gaznivides (3 syl.). A dynasty of Persia, which gave four kings and lasted fifty years (999-1049), founded by Mahmoud Gazni, who reigned from the Ganges to the Caspian Sea.

Gear (g hard) properly means "dress." In machinery, the bands and wheels that communicate motion to the working part are called the gearing. (Saxon, gearwa, clothing.)
   In good gear. To be in good working order.
   Out of gear. Not in working condition, when the "gearing" does not act properly; out of health.

Gee-up! and Gee-woo! addressed to horses both mean "Horse, get on." Gee = horse. In Notts and many other counties nurses say to young children, "Come and see the gee-gees." There is not the least likelihood that Gee-woo is the Italian gio, because gio will not fit in with any of the other terms, and it is absurd to suppose our peasants would go to Italy for such a word. Woa! or Woo! (q.v.), meaning stop, or halt, is quite another word. We subjoin the following quotation, although we differ from it. (See Come Ather.)

"Et cum sic gloriaretur, et cogitares cum quanta gloria duceretur ad illum virum super equum, dicendo Gio! Gio! cepit pede percutere terram quasi pungeret equum calcaribus." - Dialogus Creaturarum (1480).

Geese (g hard). (See Gander , Goose.)
   Geese save the capitol. The tradition is that when the Gauls invaded Rome a detachment in single file clambered up the hill of the capitol so silently that the foremost man reached the top without being challenged; but while he was striding over the rampart, some sacred geese, disturbed by the noise, began to cackle, and awoke the garrison. Marcus Manlius rushed to the wall and hurled the fellow over the precipice. To commemorate this event, the Romans carried a golden goose in procession to the capitol every year (B.C. 390).

"Those consecrated geese in orders,
That to the capitol were warders,
And being then upon patrol,
With noise alone beat off the Gaul."
Butler: Hudibras, ii. 3.

   All his swans are geese, or All his swans are turned to geese. All his expectations end in nothing; all his boasting ends in smoke. Like a person who fancies he sees a swan on a river, but finds it to be only a goose.
   The phrase is sometimes reversed thus, "All