Other forms: gathered, gathering, gathers
In sewing, a gather is cloth drawn up along a thread so that it falls in soft fullness. Gathers at the waist, sew a line of gathers, the skirt is gathered.
It is made by running a loose stitch and pulling the thread, which crowds the fabric evenly. Gathers, pleats and ruffles are three different treatments and dressmakers do not mix the words. The verb is far commoner in its ordinary senses: to gather is to bring things together, and to gather that something is true is to understand it from what you have heard. Note gathering, meaning a group of people who have come together.
1noungatherCloth drawn up on a thread to make soft fullness.
“The gathers at the waist have come loose.”
2verbbringTo bring things or people together.
“She gathered the papers into one pile.”
3verbunderstandTo understand something from what you have heard.
“I gather he is not coming back.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
gather is a drawing together.
Old English gaderian is built from the same root as together and good, from a Proto-Indo-European verb meaning to unite. Gathering cloth and gathering a crowd are the same word doing the same thing at different scales.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʰedʰ- — to unite, assemble, keep
Proto-West Germanic
*gadurōn — to bring together, unite, gather
Old English
gaderian — to gather, assemble
Middle English
gaderen
English, today
gather
From Middle English gaderen, from Old English gaderian (“to gather, assemble”), from Proto-West Germanic gadurōn (“to bring together, unite, gather”), from Proto-Indo-European gʰedʰ- (“to unite, assemble, keep”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA