Other forms: galls
Gall is bold cheek, or bitter resentment. He had the gall to ask, galling to watch, bitter gall.
The senses come from bile: gall was the old word for it, and bitterness of taste became bitterness of feeling and then brazenness. A gall is also the growth a wasp makes a tree produce, and oak galls were the source of ink for centuries.
1noungallBold cheek or nerve.
“He had the gall to ask me for money after insulting me.”
2noungrowthA growth on a plant caused by an insect.
“The small round balls on the oak leaves are galls made by tiny wasps.”
gall is nerve, or a growth.
Old English gealla means bile. The bitter taste gave the word its senses of resentment and then of nerve.
Proto-Indo-European
*ǵʰelh₃-
Proto-Germanic
*gallǭ
Proto-West Germanic
*gallā
Old English
ġealla
Middle English
galle
English, today
gall
From Middle English galle, from Old English ġealla, galla, from Proto-West Germanic gallā, from Proto-Germanic gallǭ. The figurative senses (e.g., impudence, brazenness, chutzpah) are related to the literal sense (i.e., bile) via the lasting linguocultural#Adjective effects of humorism#Noun, which governed Western medicine for many centuries before the advent of scientific medicine. Related to Dutch gal, German Galle, Swedish galle, galla, Ancient Greek χολή. Also remotely related with yellow and gold.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA