gall

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“
Some women, naturally gentle and kind, have been so ill-treated, so shamefully tyrannized over, that in process of time the "milk of human kindness in their breasts has turned to gall;" and the gall is then bitter enough.

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Definitions (61)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (12)

  1. noun See bile.
  2. noun Bitterness of feeling; rancor.
  3. noun Something bitter to endure: the gall of defeat.
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Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (35)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (6)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (8)

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Examples (50)

  • Attached to the side of the liver is a small sac-like structure called the gall bladder. —  CreationWiki - Recent changes [en]
  • Thain's gall was all the more outrageous because, at the time, he was on the verge of unloading Merrill Lynch onto Bank of America, a financial institution that taxpayers had bailed out to the tune of $25 billion. —  theithacajournal.com -
  • The blossoms were also mixed with brains, gall, and spleen of a buffalo, and then rubbed on the hide to bleach it in the tanning process. —  Find Me A Cure
  • The word translated "gall," like "marah" in the Old Testament, can be used broadly of something which is bitter. —  Challies Dot Com
  • Get mad at anyone who calls you on it and be completely shocked that a company would mislead journalists with such gall, apparently. —  VentureBeat
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

irksome ·  humiliate ·  grievous ·  odious ·  intolerable ·  painful ·  disagreeable ·  irritate ·  oppressive ·  degrade ·  bile ·  injurious

Used in the same contextWord Family

gall:   galling ·  galls ·  galled
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (8)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. Middle English, from Old English gealla, galla; see ghel-2 in Indo-European roots.
  2. Middle English galle, from Old English gealla, possibly from Latin galla, nutgall.
  3. Middle English galle, from Old French, from Latin galla, nutgall.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (5)

  1. from Middle English galle, from Anglo-Saxon gealla, Old Northumbrian galla = Old Saxon galla = Dutch gal = Middle Low German galle = Old High German galla, Middle High German G. galle = Icelandic gall = Swedish galla = Danish galde = Latin fel (fell-) (later Italian fiele = Spanish hiel = Portuguese fel = French fiel) = Greek χολή (later ult. English cholic, cholera, etc.) = Old Bulgarian zlǔti, zlǔci, gall, bile; perhaps allied to Anglo-Saxon geolo, geolu, English yellow, q. v., to L. helvus, yellowish, and to Greek χλωρός, yellowish-green: see chlorin, etc.
  2. Early modern English also gaul, gaule; from Middle English galle, from Anglo-Saxon gealla, a gall (on a horse), = Dutch gal, a windgall, = Middle Low German galle = Middle High German galle, a swelling or tumor on a horse's leg, German galle = Danish galle = Swedish galla, a disease in a horse's feet, an excrescence under a horse's tongue, = Icelandic galli, a flaw, fault, defect. Cf. Old French galle, a galling, fretting, itching of the skin, French gale, a scab, scurf, mange, itch, Middle Latin galla, scab; Spanish agalla, plural agalles, windgalls, also a distemper of the glands under the cheeks or in the tonsils. If the Roman forms are not of Teutonic origin, all the forms must be referred to L. galla, a gallnut, with which at all events they have been confused: see gall.
  3. Early modern English also gaul, gaule; from Middle English gallen, chiefly in past participle galled, from Anglo-Saxon *geallian, only in past participle gealled, galled, chafed (of a horse), = Dutch gallen, gall, chafe, = Old French galler, galer, gall, fret, itch, rub; from the noun.
  4. Not in Middle English; from Old French galle, French galle = Old Spanish galla, Spanish agalla = Portuguese galha = Italian galla = Danish galle, in comp. gal- = Dutch gal- = German gall- = Swedish gall-, in comp. (see gall-apple, gallnut), a gall, gallnut, from Latin galla, a gallnut, oak-apple.
  5. from gall, n.
 

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/gɔl/
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