Gall

How to spell gall

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce gall

What does gall mean?

1. nounBold, shameless nerve or impudence.
2. verbTo irritate or annoy someone, or to chafe the skin by rubbing.
3. nounBile, the bitter fluid from the liver, or bitterness of feeling.

Gall in a sentence

• noun

  He had the gall to ask for a refund after breaking the item himself.

• verb

  It really gall me to see lazy colleagues take the credit.

• noun

  The old remedy mixed vinegar with the bitter gall of an animal.

• noun

  It takes real gall to show up uninvited and demand a seat.

• verb

  The stiff new boots began to gall his heels on the long walk.

• noun

  Years of resentment filled his words with gall.

Where does gall come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a genuinely old native word with two strands that fused over time. The 'bitter fluid' sense descends from the Old English gealla, meaning 'bile' (the bitter secretion of the liver), which traces back to a Germanic root linked to the colour yellow, the same shade as bile itself; that ancient colour connection also lies behind the words 'yellow' and 'gold'. Because bile tasted bitter, the word came to stand for bitterness of feeling and then for brazen, bitter nerve, which is the everyday modern sense of shameless audacity. A second Old English strand, gealla meaning a sore or chafed spot on the skin, gave the verb 'to gall', to rub raw and so to irritate or annoy. The botanical 'gall', an abnormal swelling on a plant caused by insects, came separately through Old French galle from the Latin galla, though the shared spelling reinforced all the senses in English. The double l ending has been stable for centuries, and the main spelling trap is simply confusing gall with the unrelated proper noun Gaul.

How the word is built

• gall (from Old English galla / gealla: bile, sore)