gad

intj

1. An exclamation roughly equivalent to by God, goodness gracious, for goodness' sake.

   “The clasp slips free (gad, what lush kazooms) and she even helps him pull off the blouse that is now cuffing her at the elbows.”

verb

1. (intransitive)To move from one location to another in an apparently random and frivolous manner.

   “This, I suppose, is the virgin who abideth still in the house with you. She is not given, I hope, to gadding overmuch, nor to vain and foolish decorations of her person with ear-rings and finger-rings, and crisping-pins: for such are unprofitable, yea, abominable.”

   “So when he saw King Arthur he said: "Thou knave! Wherefore didst thou quit thy work to go a-gadding?"”

   “But there is no telling the sacrament, seldom if in any case revealed to the gadding world, wherever under circumstances at all akin to those here attempted to be set forth, two of great Nature's nobler order embrace.”

   “If you are on the board of governors of a school and have contracted to supply an orator for the great day of the year, you can be forgiven for feeling a trifle jumpy when you learn that the silver-tongued one has gadded off to the metropolis, leaving no word as to when he will be returning, if ever.”

2. To run with the tail in the air, bent over the back, usually in an attempt to escape the warble fly.

noun

1. One who roams about idly; a gadabout.
2. (Northern-England, Scotland, derogatory)A greedy and/or stupid person.

   “Get over here, ye good-for-nothing gadǃ”

   “Ye greedy ged, ye have taken the very breath out o' me.”

3. (UK, US, dialectal, especially)A goad, a sharp-pointed rod for driving cattle, horses, etc, or one with a whip or thong on the end for the same purpose.

   “Ist yoakes and bowes and gad and yoaksticks there?”

   “Does your cow kick? Do not fly into a passion and pound her with a handspike, or trim her with a gad or a cow-hide.”

   “Twain finds his voice after a short search for it and when he impels it forward it is a good, strong, steady voice in harness until the driver becomes absent-minded, when it stops to rest, and then the gad must be used to drive it on again.”

   “Our thrifty dame, Mally, she rises soon at morn, She goes and tells the master I'm pulling up the corn; He clicks up the oxen gad and sair belabours me, For I'm Robin Spraggon's auld grey mare, ae how he's guided me!”

   “On the morning of Palm-Sunday, the gamekeeper, some servant on the estate, brings with him a large gad or whip, with a long thong; the stock is made of the mountain ash, […]”

4. (UK, US, dialectal)A rod or stick, such as a fishing rod or a measuring rod.

   “And we'll prepare our limber gads, Lang lines, and braw brass wheels;”

   “Seek out thy tackle, thy creel and thy gad.”

   “Woe to the lad / without a rowen-tree gad.”

   “We'll splice oor gads nigh Barra Mill, Beneath yon auld birk tree.”

5. (especially)A pointed metal tool for breaking or chiselling rock; a pick.

   “I will go get a leaf of brass, / And with a gad of steel will write these words.”

   “Frank was able to keep his eyes open long enough to check his bed with a miner's gad and douse the electric lamp”

6. (obsolete)A metal bar.

   “they sette uppon hym and drew oute their swerdys to have slayne hym – but there wolde no swerde byghte on hym more than uppon a gadde of steele, for the Hyghe Lorde which he served, He hym preserved.”

   “Flemish steel […] some in bars and some in gads.”

   “When a man received sentence of death, he was put upon the gad as it was called, that is, secured to the bar of iron in the manner mentioned in the text. The practice subsisted in Edinburgh […]”

7. (dated)An indeterminate measure of metal produced by a furnace, sometimes equivalent to a bloom weighing around 100 pounds.

   “Twice a day a 'gad' of iron, i.e., a bloom weighing 1 cwt. was produced, which took from six to seven hours.”

8. A spike on a gauntlet; a gadling.

   “Sometimes we see the knuckles ornamented with gads or gadlings.”

   “His gauntlets have embroidered cuffs; there are gads or gadlings on the fingers.”

   “Another curious device was that of arming the knuckles of the gauntlets with spikes (gads or gadlings), by which they became weapons as well as defences.”

   “On both finger joints are gads, which are beautifully faceted and brought to a point.”

9. (abbreviation, acronym, alt-of)Acronym of generalized anxiety disorder.

name

1. The seventh son of Jacob, by his wife's handmaid Zilpah.
2. One of the Israelite tribes mentioned in the Torah, descended from Gad.
3. A male given name from Hebrew.

   ““We’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on,” Musk said, borrowing the term from Gad Saad, a Canadian scholar who is also a frequent Rogan host.”

4. A surname.