1620. Percy, Folio MSS., p. 404. Be not att ffirst to nice nor coye when gamsters you are courtinge.
2. (old).—A ruffler; a gallant; a wencher; a man fit and ready for anything; also a player.
1639-61. Rump, i., 253, 'A Medley.' Room for a gamester that flies at all he sees.
1676. Etheredge, Man of Mode, v., 1. Live it also like a frank gamester, on the square.
Gamey, adj. (colloquial).—1. High-smelling;
offensive to the nose;
half-rotten.
2. (colloquial).—Frisky; plucky.
1843. Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, ch. xi. There's something gamey in it, young ladies, ain't there.
1869. S. Bowles, Our New West, p. 275. Horses are fresh and fat and gamey.
Gaminess, subs. (colloquial).—The
malodorousness proceeding
from decay and—by implication—filthiness.
Gaming-house, subs. (old).—A
house of ill-repute—hell, tavern,
or stews.
1611. Cotgrave, Dictionarie, Berlan, a common tippling house, a house of gaming, or of any other disorder.
Gammer, subs. (old).—An old wife;
a familiar address; the correlative
of gaffer (q.v.).
1551. Gammer Gurton's Needle Title) as elsewhere].
1706. Hudibras Redivivus, Part VI. And monkey faces, yawns, and stammers, Delude the pious dames and gammers To think their mumbling guides precation So full of heavenly inspiration.
1842. Tennyson, The Goose. Ran Gaffer, stumbled gammer.
Gamming, subs. (nautical).—A
whaleman's term for the visits
paid by crews to each other at
sea.
1884. G. A. Sala, in Illus. Lon. News, July 19, p. 51, c. 2. When two or more American whalers meet in mid-ocean, and there are no whales in sight, it is customary to tack topsails and exchange visits. This social intercourse the whale-men call gamming . . . I cannot help fancying that 'gam' is in greater probability an abbreviation of the Danish 'gammen,' sport, or that it has something to do with the nautical 'gammoning," the lasting by which the bowsprit is bound firmly down to the cutwater.
1890. Century, Aug. To gam means to gossip. The word occurs again and again in the log-books of the old whalers.
Gammon, subs. (colloquial).—1.
Nonsense; humbug; deceit.
Sometimes gammon and
spinach. No gammon = no
error, no lies.
[Skeat says from Mid. Eng. Gamen = a game; but R. Sherwood (Eng. Dict., 1660), gives 'a beggar or seller of gammons of Bacon; and in Cotgrave (1611), jambonnier = a beggar, also a seller of bacon, or gammons of bacon.']
c. 1363. Chester Plays. i. 102. This gammon shall begin.
1781. G. Parker, View of Society, I. 208. I thought myself pretty much a master of gammon, but the Billingsgate eloquence of Mrs. P. . . . exceeded me.
1811. Lexicon Balatronicum, s.v. Gamon. What rum gamon the old file pitched to the flat.
1823. Mod. Flash Dict. Gammon—Falsehood and bombast.
1823-45. Hood, Poems (ed. 1846), vi., p. 96, Behold yon servitor of God and Mammon, Who, binding up his Bible with his ledger, Blends Gospel texts with trading gammon.
1836. Dickens, Pickwick, ch. xxvii. Lord bless their little hearts, they thinks its all right, and don't know no better, but they're the wictims o' gammon, Samivel, they're the wictims o' gammon.
