Other forms: gangs
A gang is a band of people who go about or work together. A street gang, a gang of workmen, gang up on somebody.
The criminal sense dominates, but a gang of labourers is entirely neutral and older — a railway gang, a chain gang. To gang up on somebody is to combine against them. Note that the word comes from the Old English verb meaning to go, which survives in Scots as gang, to walk.
1noungangA band of people who go about or work together.
“A gang of workmen was repairing the road outside our house.”
gang is a group.
Old English gangan means to go or walk. A gang was first a going, then a set of people going together.
Old English
gangan
Middle English
gangen
English, today
gang
From Middle English gangen, from Old English gangan. From Middle English gangen, from Old English gangan (“to go, walk, turn out”), from Proto-West Germanic gangan, from Proto-Germanic ganganą (“to go, walk”), from Proto-Indo-European ǵʰengʰ- (“to step, walk”). Cognate with Scots gang (“to go on foot, walk”), Swedish gånga (“to walk, go”), Faroese ganga (“to walk”), Icelandic ganga (“to walk, go”), Norwegian Nynorsk ganga (“to walk, go”), sa-ved जंहस्. Ultimately related to noun, which see below.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA