Useful Words Beginning in "Ga"

Though this is a generation that revels in the visual, and though I sympathize with that revelry, I will always believe that some words, when well chosen, are worth 1,000 pictures. As the Scriptures say: "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver" (Prov. 25:11). But these words just don't leap off the page at me; I need to take care to find them. I like to comb the dictionary, to see what comes to me. Here are the results of my quotidian gleanings.

Gadarene

The word is biblical, and comes from the story of the "Gadarene demoniac" (Mk. 5:1-20). Gadara was a town in ancient Israel, well-known for its philosophers in the Hellenistic era (330 BCE-200 CE). This website tells you all about it. The demon-possessed man from Gadara is one of the more memorable Biblical characters because of the vivid description of his mental affliction and the method Jesus used to rid him of his demons. That method was one of transference--casting the demonic spirits into a bevy of squealing and puling pigs, who thereafter plunged headlong off the cliff into the sea. That image, of beings irrationally plunging off a cliff to their deaths below, is the picture behind the adjective "gadarene." It means "headlong" or "precipitate." It is rarely used today, but we could reverse that trend. DH Lawrence said: "A vast mob which may at any moment start to bold down to the precipice Gadarene-wise."

The four words with which I think it can most usefully be associated today are plunge, bolt, rush and charge. Thus, you can have a gadarene rush (1150 Google references), a gadarene bolt (0 references), a gadarene plunge (61 references) or a gadarene charge (15 references). In order to use the term rightly all you need is a group or individual which is acting irrationally as it considers and puts into effect a course of action. Those abound, don't they? Would you say that our invasion of Iraq was a well-considered one, or a gadarene one?

Galloping

You might think that there is little reason for comment on galloping, since we all know what it means. It means, of course, "the action of a horse that gallops; a running at a gallop," where gallop is a leaping or springing gait of a horse. Shakespeare uses the term in this way in Macbeth (IV.1): "I did hear/ The galloping of horse; who was't came by?" But the word also has a figurative signification. It means: "proceeding at a gallop; hence, figuratively, advancing rapidly; making rapid progress." By far the most frequent attestation of it is in the historical medical phrase "galloping consumption." For example, Jeremy Bentham, in his monstrously-huge Rationale of Judicial Evidence (1827) could say: "The father in full vigour, the son in a galloping consumption." But maybe we could skillfully pry this term from the hands of the medical establishment and use it in the following ways: a "galloping imagination" or "galloping insanity" (there is a blog so entitled) or "galloping eyes" or "galloping thought/mind." We often use the word "racing" with some of these words, but "galloping" would be much more vivid. From a book review: "he writes with an urgent, galloping imagination, as if his fingers on the keyboard can't keep up with his racing brain." Or, relating to Montaigne, "in vain he tried to curb his galloping imagination brought on by his idle retirement." NYC might be the City that never sleeps; a mind or imagination or energy that is boundless may best be denominated "galloping."

Gamine

A "gamine" is a female gamin. Thanks, Bill. So, let's start with gamin. The OED says that the English-language origin of gamin, defined as "a neglected boy, left to run about the streets; a street Arab, goes back to 1840. Thackeray wrote: "There are the little gamins mocking him." But the OED definition is too restrained, too "British." The Century defines it, in addition, as "a neglected and precociously knowing street-boy." Thus, you have the picture of a sort of Dickensian youth, cap pulled low over the eyes, surveying the scene in London, sidling up to unsuspecting rich people and "relieving" them of their wallets. Even though the word was first used in English in 1840, it owes its origin to the French language. Here is the explanation of Victor Hugo in Les Miserables:

"The word gamin was printed for the first time, and passed from the populace into literature, in 1834. It made its first appearance in a work called Claude Gueux: the scandal was great, but the word has remained. The gamin Paris at the present day, like the Graeculus of Rome in former time, is the youthful people with the wrinkle of the old world on its forehead," (quoted in Century Dictionary, s.v.).

But it was not until 1899 that girls got into the act. A "gamine" is "a female gamin; an attractively pert, mischievous or elfish girl or young woman..." From 1921 we have: "The 'Coquette' is an unscrupulous milliner's assistant, a regular 'gamine,' who plays off a lover against a husband." And, DH Lawrence seemed to have an affinity for the word. From 1925: "He was fascinated by Lou's quaint aplomb..her gamine knowingness." You could use the term as a noun ("the puckish gamine") or an adjective ("her gamine knowingness"). The Houston Post (1973) described the movie Paper Moon in the following terms: "Peter Bogdanovich's tale of a '30s con man and his gamin (masc.) sidekick."

I will close this essay by referring to "gaminerie," defined as "the behavior or characteristics of a gamin or gamine." A 1917 quotation, "With the interment of his little friend [sc. a monkey] Anatole buried for ever his own gaminerie," brings to mind a host of experiences as a parent. "With one furtive kiss of her childhood doll, she put it back into the trunk, reluctantly burying her gaminerie and, with a slight shudder, faced the reality of a new life." When Little Jackie Paper no longer played with Puff the Magic Dragon, it was because he, too, had left his gaminerie behind. Too bad for us all.

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