Other forms: gargling, gargled
To gargle is to wash the throat with liquid held by the breath. Gargle with salt water, gargle and spit, a gargle.
Air pushed up through liquid at the back of the throat is what makes the sound, and salt water gargling is the standard home remedy for a sore throat — the evidence for it is modest but real. Note that gargle and gargoyle are the same French word for a throat, so a gargoyle is named for the water gurgling through it.
1verbgargleTo wash the throat with liquid held by the breath.
“Gargle for about thirty seconds, four times a day.”
gargle is a throat washing.
French gargouiller comes from gargouille, a throat or gutter. Gargoyle is the same word — a spout carrying water through a stone throat.
Old French
gargouille
French
gargouiller — to gargle
English, today
gargle
Built from
From French gargouiller (“to gargle”), from Old French gargouille, gargole (“gutter, throat”). Compare a doublet of gargoyle and Spanish garganta. Displaced non-native gargargisen from Latin, and native swillan (ancestor of swill).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA