Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- To frighten or terrify.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb obsolete To fright or terrify. See
gally , v. t.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb obsolete to
frighten
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Sowndz nommy, ai haz sum piko de gallow if U wantz sum foar yer chipz
u can always mow AROUND. - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger? 2010
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I called himdad, like a Rembrandt tacked to a gallow.
The Hangman 2010
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Please place my vote in for a 30 day gallow sentence.
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Cheney and Bush should swing from the public gallow.
Think Progress » Cheney’s handwritten notes on Wilson revealed. 2006
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MOWAFFAK AL-RUBAIE, IRAQI NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: He was telling me, don't -- I should not be afraid of the gallow, of the execution.
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Mount my gallow high at the sunset, when my heart is calm like a pigeon..
Sunday, April 30, 2006 As'ad 2006
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I dreamt that the heart of the earth is larger than its map, and more clear than its mirrors and my gallow.
Saturday, January 07, 2006 As'ad 2006
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I dreamt that the heart of the earth is larger than its map, and more clear than its mirrors and my gallow.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006 As'ad 2006
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Last week I was dragged out of a river like a drowned rat, and lost a bran-new night-cap, with a sulfer stayhook, that cost me a good half-a-crown, and an odd shoe of green gallow monkey; besides wetting my cloaths and taring my smuck, and an ugly gash made in the back part of my thy, by the stump of a tree —
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Their worships, as he called them, were about a score of fusty crack-ropes and gallow-clappers, or rather more, all posted before a bar, and staring at each other like so many dead pigs.
Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002
bilby commented on the word gallow
Not related to plural gallows?
August 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word gallow
The O.E.D. lists it only as a verb, actually.
EDIT: Oh, they have a note about plurality vs. singularity on gallows: 'In OE. the sing. galasga and the pl. galasgan are both used for ‘a gallows’, the pl. having reference presumably to the two posts of which the apparatus mainly consisted. Occasional examples of the sing. form occur in ME., and even down to the 17th c.; but from the 13th c. onwards the plural galwes and its later phonetic representatives have been the prevailing forms. So far as our material shows, Caxton is the first writer to speak of ‘a gallows’, though he also uses the older expression ‘a pair of gallows’; but it is, of course, possible that the pl. form was sometimes treated as a sing. much earlier. From the 16th c. gallows has been (exc. arch. in ‘pair of gallows’) used as a sing., with a new plural gallowses; the latter, though perh. not strictly obsolete, is now seldom used; the formation is felt to be somewhat uncouth, so that the use of the word in the plural is commonly evaded.' (asg is how an 'insular g' comes out when you copy and paste from O.E.D. Online.)
August 12, 2009
qroqqa commented on the word gallow
The singular noun occurs in a few fixed phrases like 'gallow-bird' (which the OED has no instances of, but Google Books has) and 'gallow-tree'. But probably these date from the times when 'gallow' could be singular; they're not quite the same process as the singularization in 'scissor blade', 'trouser leg' etc.
August 12, 2009