Other forms: gigs
A gig is a single live performance by a band or a comedian. A gig on Friday, play a gig, the gig was cancelled.
It is the ordinary word among musicians and audiences alike; concert sounds larger and more formal. Gigging means playing regularly. The word has spread far beyond music to mean any short piece of paid work, which is where the gig economy comes from — work paid by the job rather than by the hour, with no employment security. Note gig bag, the soft case a guitar travels in.
1noungigA single live performance by a band.
“The band played their first gig in a small pub.”
2nounshortA short piece of paid work.
“He took a gig writing manuals for six weeks.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
gig is a job or performance.
The origin is uncertain. It appeared in jazz slang around 1915, possibly from an older word for a light carriage or from a French word for a fiddle. Nobody has settled it, which is unusual for so recent a word.
Old French
gigue — a fiddle
English, today
gig
The etymology of the noun is unknown, but compare Old French gigue (“a fiddle”). The verb is derived from the noun.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA