gad

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To move about restlessly and with little purpose. See Synonyms at wander.
2. n. A pointed tool, such as a spike or chisel, used for breaking rock or ore.
3. n. A goad, as for prodding cattle.
4. v. To break up (ore, for example) with a gad.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A point or pointed instrument, as a pointed bar of steel, a spear, or an arrowhead.
2. n. A sharp point affixed to a part of the armor, as the gauntlet, which could thus be used to deal a formidable blow.
3. n. A thick pointed nail; a gad-nail; specifically, in mining, a pointed tool used for loosening and breaking up rock or coal which has been shaken or thrown down by a blast, or which is loose and jointy enough to be got without the use of powder. It is intermediate between a drill and a wedge, but is properly called a gad only when ending in a point, and not in an edge, as a wedge. Old drills are often made into gads, which may be of any length; but from six inches to a foot is common.
4. n. A wedge or ingot of steel or iron.
5. n. A stick, or rod of wood, sharpened to a point, or provided with a metal point, used to drive cattle with; a goad; hence, a slender stick or rod of any kind, especially one used for whipping.
6. n. A gadfly.
7. n. In old Scotch prisons, a round bar of iron crossing the condemned cell horizontally at the height of about six inches from the floor, and strongly built into the wall at both ends. The ankles of a prisoner sentenced to death were secured within shackles which were connected, by a chain about four feet long, with a large iron ring which traveled on the gad. Watch-dogs are now sometimes fastened in a similar way.
8. To fasten with a gad-nail.
9. In mining, to break up or loosen with the gad; use the gad upon.
10. To flit about restlessly; move about uneasily or with excitement.
11. To ramble about idly, from trivial curiosity or for gossip.
12. Hence To ramble or rove; wander, as in thought or speech; straggle, as in growth.
13. n. The act of gadding or rambling about: used in the phrase on or upon the gad.
14. n. The name of God, minced as an oath. Compare egad.
15. n. A measuring-rod for land; a measure of length varying, in different districts, from nine or ten to as many as twenty feet.
16. n. A division of an uninclosed pasture, said to have been usually 6½ feet wide in Lincolnshire.
17. n. A cord or rope made from the fibers of the osier.

Wiktionary

1. n. A sharp-pointed object; a goad.
2. n. obsolete A metal bar.
3. n. A pointed metal tool for breaking or chiselling rock, especially in mining.
4. n. dated, metallurgy An indeterminate measure of metal produced by a furnace, perhaps equivalent to the bloom, perhaps weighing around 100 pounds.
5. v. intransitive To move from one location to another in an apparently random and frivolous manner.
6. interj. An exclamatory interjection roughly equivalent to 'by God', 'goodness gracious', 'for goodness' sake'.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The point of a spear, or an arrowhead.
2. n. A pointed or wedge-shaped instrument of metal, as a steel wedge used in mining, etc.
3. n. A sharp-pointed rod; a goad.
4. n. A spike on a gauntlet; a gadling.
5. n. obsolete A wedge-shaped billet of iron or steel.
6. n. Prov. Eng. Local, U.S. A rod or stick, as a fishing rod, a measuring rod, or a rod used to drive cattle with.
7. v. To walk about; to rove or go about, without purpose; hence, to run wild; to be uncontrolled.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. wander aimlessly in search of pleasure
2. n. an anxiety disorder characterized by chronic free-floating anxiety and such symptoms as tension or sweating or trembling or lightheadedness or irritability etc that has lasted for more than six months
3. n. a sharp prod fixed to a rider's heel and used to urge a horse onward