Gad
Pronunciation
- IPA: /ɡæd/
- Rhymes: -æd
Origin 1
Taboo deformation of God.
Full definition of gad
Interjection
- An exclamatory interjection roughly equivalent to 'by God', 'goodness gracious', 'for goodness' sake'.1905 That's the trouble -- it was too easy for you -- you got reckless -- thought you could turn me inside out, and chuck me in the gutter like an empty purse. But, by gad, that ain't playing fair: that's dodging the rules of the game. — Edith Wharton, House of Mirth.
Origin 2
Middle English gadden ("to hurry, to rush about").
Verb
- (intransitive) To move from one location to another in an apparently random and frivolous manner.
- 1852, Alice Cary, Clovernook ....This, I suppose, is the virgin who abideth still in the house with you. She is not given, I hope, to gadding overmuch, nor to vain and foolish decorations of her person with ear-rings and finger-rings, and crisping-pins: for such are unprofitable, yea, abominable.
- Wodehouse Offing|XIII|If you are on the board of governors of a school and have contracted to supply an orator for the great day of the year, you can be forgiven for feeling a trifle jumpy when you learn that the silver-tongued one has gadded off to the metropolis, leaving no word as to when he will be returning, if ever.
Synonyms
Derived terms
Origin 3
From Old Norse gaddr ("goad, spike").
Noun
gad
(plural gads)- A sharp-pointed object; a goad.
- 1885, Detroit Free Press., December 17Twain finds his voice after a short search for it and when he impels it forward it is a good, strong, steady voice in harness until the driver becomes absent-minded, when it stops to rest, and then the gad must be used to drive it on again.
- (obsolete) A metal bar.
- 1485, Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, Book XV:they sette uppon hym and drew oute their swerdys to have slayne hym – but there wolde no swerde byghte on hym more than uppon a gadde of steele, for the Hyghe Lorde which he served, He hym preserved.
- MoxonFlemish steel ... some in bars and some in gads.
- A pointed metal tool for breaking or chiselling rock, especially in mining.
- ShakespeareI will go get a leaf of brass,
And with a gad of steel will write these words. - 2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage 2007, p. 327:Frank was able to keep his eyes open long enough to check his bed with a miner's gad and douse the electric lamp
- (dated, metallurgy) An indeterminate measure of metal produced by a furnace, perhaps equivalent to the bloom, perhaps weighing around 100 pounds.
- 1957, H.R. Schubert, History of the British Iron and Steel Industry, p. 146.''Twice a day a 'gad' of iron, i.e., a bloom weighing 1 cwt. was produced, which took from six to seven hours.
- A spike on a gauntlet; a gadling.
- (UK, US, dialect) A rod or stick, such as a fishing rod, a measuring rod, or a rod used to drive cattle with.