Gad

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ɡæd/
• Rhymes: -æd

Taboo deformation of God.

Full definition of gad

Interjection

1. 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.

Derived terms

• egads
• egad

Middle English gadden ("to hurry, to rush about").

Verb

1. (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

• gallivant

Derived terms

• gadabout
• gaddish, gaddishness

From Old Norse gaddr ("goad, spike").

Noun

1. 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.
2. (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.
3. 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
4. (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.
5. A spike on a gauntlet; a gadling.
6. (UK, US, dialect) A rod or stick, such as a fishing rod, a measuring rod, or a rod used to drive cattle with.

Anagrams

• DAG, dag, GDA