Emily Dickinson Lexicon

GAME'LESS, a.

Destitute of game.

GAME'SOME, a.

Gay; sportive; playful; frolicksome. This gamesome humor of children. Locke.

GAME'SOME-LY, adv.

Merrily; playfully.

GAME'SOME-NESS, n.

Sportiveness; merriment.

GAME'STER, n. [game, and Sax. steora, a director.]

1. A person addicted to gaming; one who is accustomed to play for money or other stake, at cards, dice, billiards and the like; a gambler; one skilled in games. Addison. It is as easy to be a scholar as a gamester. Harris.
2. One engaged at play. Bacon.
3. A merry, frolicksome person. [Not used.] Shak.
4. A prostitute. [Not in use.] Shak.

GAM'ING, n.

1. The act or art of playing any game in a contest for a victory, or for a prize or stake.
2. The practice of using cards, dice, billiards and the like, according to certain rules, for winning money, &c.

GAM'ING, ppr.

Playing; sporting; playing for money.

GAM'ING-HOUSE, n.

A house where gaming is practiced. Blackstone.

GAM'ING-TA-BLE, n.

A table appropriated to gaming.

GAM-MAR'O-LITE, n.

A petrified crawfish or other crustaceous animal.

GAM'MER, n. [Sw. gammal, Dan. gammel, old; Sw. gumma, an old woman.]

The compellation of an old woman, answering to gaffer, applied to an old man.

GAM'MON, n. [It. gamba; Fr. jambe, a leg; jambon, a leg of bacon, jambe bone.]

1. The buttock or thigh of a hog, pickled and smoked or dried; a smoked ham.
2. A game, called usually back-gammon, – which see.

GAM'MON, v.t.¹

1. To make bacon; to pickle and dry in smoke.
2. To fasten a bowsprit to the stem of a ship by several turns of a rope. Mar. Dict.

GAM'MON, v.t.²

1. In the game of back-gammon, the party that, by fortunate throws of the dice or by superior skill in moving, withdraws all his men from the board, before his antagonist has been able to get his men home and withdraw any of them from his table, gammons his antagonist.
2. To impose on a person by making him believe improbable stories. Pickwick Papers.

GAM'MON-ED, pp. [See the verb.]

GAM'MON-ING, ppr. [See the verb.]

GAM'MUT, n. [Sp. gamma; Port. id.; Fr. gamme; from the Greek letter so named.]

1. A scale on which notes in music are written or printed, consisting of lines and spaces, which are named after the first seven letters of the alphabet.
2. The first or gravest note in Guido's scale of music, the modern scale.

GAM-O-PET'AL-OUS, a.

When the petals of a flower are united toward the base.

GAM-O-SEP'AL-OUS, a.

When the parts of that envelop of a flower, called perianth by Linnæus, are united at the base.

GAN, v.

A contraction of began, or rather the original simple word, Sax. gynnan, to begin.

GANCH, v.t. [It. gancio, a hook.]

To drop from a high place on hooks, as the Turks do malefactors, by way of punishment.

GAN'DER, n. [Sax. gandra, ganra; Ir. ganra. In Ger. and D. gans is a goose; D. ganserick, a gander; Gr. χην, and probably L. anser. Pliny says, that in Germany the small white geese were called ganzæ. Lib. 10. 22.]

The male of fowls of the goose kind.

GANG, n. [Sax. gang; D. Dan. G. gang; Sw. gång, a going, a pace or gait, a way, a passage, an alley, an avenue, a porch, portico or gallery; G. erzreicher gang, and Dan. mineralisk gang, a metallic vein, a streak in a mine; Goth. gagg, a way or street; gaggan, to go, to walk.]

1. Properly, a going; hence, a number going in company; hence, a company, or a number of persons associated for a particular purpose; as, a gang of thieves.
2. In seamen's language, a select number of a ship's crew appointed on a particular service, under a suitable officer. Mar. Dict.
3. In mining, literally a course or vein, but appropriately the earthy, stony, saline or combustible substance, which contains the ore of metals, or is only mingled with it, without being chimically combined. This is called the gang or matrix of the ore. It differs from a mineralizer, in not being combined with the metal. Cleaveland. [This word, in the latter sense, is most unwarrantably and erroneously written gangue.]

GANG, v.i. [Sax. gangan; Goth. gaggan.]

To go; to walk. [Local or used only in ludicrous language.]

GANG'BOARD, n.

A board or plank with cleats for steps, used for walking into or out of a boat.