Etymology — The origins of English words

Derived from game + -ster.

From germ + line.

From glisten + -y.

From gastropod + -ous.

From Latin fūlīginōsus, from fūlīgō (“soot”).

Variant of gorm/gaum, which see for more.

From the Hanyu Pinyin romanization of the Mandarin 富縣 /富县 (Fùxiàn).

From Hindi घड़ियाल (ghaṛiyāl). Doublet of gavial.

From gaol + bird.

From geno- + -type.

From friend + -hood.

Uncertain, either a contraction of God’s blood, or of God’s body

Back-formation from gestation on the basis of -ate (verb-forming suffix).

1520s, original sense “lowest note of musical scale”, contraction of Medieval Latin gamma ut, from gamma (“Greek letter, corresponding to the musical note G”) + ut (“first solfège syllable, now replaced by do”). In modern terms, “G do” – the first note of the G scale. Meaning later extended to mean all the notes of a scale, and then more generally any complete range.

From Latin Germānia. Doublet of Germany.

From Middle English garfysche (“garfish”, literally “spear-fish”), from gor (“spear”) + fisch (“fish”). Cognate with Scots gairfish (“garfish”).

From the Postal Romanization of the Nanjing court dialect Mandarin 福建 (Fújiàn), from before the modern palatalization of [k] to [t͡ɕ]. Doublet of Hokkien. Compare Spanish Fokien, Portuguese Foquiem.

From games + -man.

Borrowed from French gilet (“vest, waistcoat”), from regional Italian gileccu (Calabria), gilecco (Genoa), gelecco (Naples), ggileccu (Sicily), etc. (standard Italian gilè is borrowed from French), from Turkish yelek (“jelick; vest, waistcoat”) (ultimately from Proto-Turkic *yẹl (“wind”, noun)) with the final syllable modified to match other types of clothing such as corselet and mantelet. The Oxford English Dictionary does not regard the French word as having derived from Arabic جَلِيقَة (jalīqa), which it views as a recent borrowing from Italian into Algerian Arabic. Doublet of jelick.

From Middle English gemeter, geometer, ultimately from Late Latin geōmetrēs, from Ancient Greek γεωμέτρης (geōmétrēs), from γῆ (gê, “earth”) + μετρέω (metréō, “to measure”).

Borrowed from Japanese 河豚(ふぐ) (fugu, “blowfish”).

From goat + back, modelled on horseback.

From gate. A topographic name for someone who lived by the gates of a medieval walled town.

See giblets.