Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun UK A small artificial channel carrying water. Usually used with respect to channels built to feed mills.
  • noun informal, pejorative A fool.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English gote ("channel, stream"), from Old English *gotu (“channel, gutter, drain”), from Proto-Germanic *gutō (“gutter, drain”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰew- (“to pour”). Cognate with Scots gote, goit, goate ("trench, ditch, watercourse"), Dutch goot ("gutter"), Middle Low German gote ("ditch"). More at gote.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Popularised by the television series Red Dwarf. Possibly a shortening of goitre (i.e. a pain in the neck), or from git.

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Examples

  • I goit an automated response saying to expect it to take up to 72 hours to hear back from them.

    What if No One's Watching?: April 2009 Archives 2009

  • I goit an automated response saying to expect it to take up to 72 hours to hear back from them.

    Makeup review: e.l.f. (What if No One's Watching?) 2009

  • June 25th, 2007 at 7: 43 pm slc thinks Dennis Ross worked for 12 years to create a Palestinian state. good one, slc, goit any bridges for sale?

    Matthew Yglesias » Fair and Balanced 2007

  • It is not a viable, real, business, especially in the current economy. reply goit

    Confirmed: Facebook Loses CFO Gideon Yu Erick Schonfeld 2005

  • Soooooooo will Jimmy Wales edit answers that he does not agree with like he edited the Wikipedia article about him? reply goit

    Jimmy Wales Quietly Launches Wikianswers Erick Schonfeld 2005

  • Once or twice he collided with those who were slow to get out of his path, and almost overturned old Amos Entwistle into the goit as he pushed past him on the bank that afforded the nearest cut to the village.

    Lancashire Idylls (1898) Marshall Mather

  • The Ribble here supplies a large mill, the water-wheels of which are 150 horse-power; therefore, when they are at work in the daytime, the whole force of the river is often passing through the mill-lead (goit) and the bed of the river between the weir, and the tail goit in such times is left dry, except in a few pools.

    Essays in Natural History and Agriculture Thomas Garnett 1838

  • But the objections to such a plan on the part of the manufacturers will be insuperable, in fact, the accumulation of sticks and leaves in the autumn, and ice in the winter, will be so great at the grating in the tail-goit, that the wheels will be thrown into back water and the works stopped, and all this loss and inconvenience will be incurred because of the possibility of a

    Essays in Natural History and Agriculture Thomas Garnett 1838

  • In one of the clauses of the bill (I do not remember which, and I have not the bill at hand to refer to) you require that a grating, the bars of which shall not be more than three inches distant from each other, and which shall be placed at the junction of the tail - goit with the river, as well as in front of the wheel.

    Essays in Natural History and Agriculture Thomas Garnett 1838

  • At the point where I first saw them, the tail goit of a water - wheel had its junction with the river, but being Sunday there was no current there -- not a single Eel took its course up the goit, although the water was deeper there than where they went.

    Essays in Natural History and Agriculture Thomas Garnett 1838

Comments

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  • A young unfledged bird. --Dr. Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary and Supplement, 1841.

    May 19, 2011