See also: gauð, Gäud, and Gaud

English edit

Pronunciation edit

Etymology 1 edit

From Middle English gaude, gawde (jest, prank, trick; ornamental bead in a rosary, trinket, bauble). Compare Middle English gaudy, gaudee, of the same meaning.

Noun edit

gaud (plural gauds)

  1. A cheap showy trinket
    • c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: [] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:
      an idle gaud
    • 1912, The World's Wit and Humor, page 176:
      A Libyan longing took us, and we would have chosen, if we could, to bear a strand of grotesque beads, or a handful of brazen gauds, and traffic them for some sable maid with crisp locks, whom, uncoffling from the captive train beside the desert, we should make to do our general housework forever, through the right of lawful purchase.
    • 1922, T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (published 1926)
      Dalmeny lent me red tabs, Evans his brass hat; so that I had the gauds of my appointment in the ceremony of the Jaffa gate, which for me was the supreme moment of the war.
    • 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses, Part I, episode 1:
      Her secrets: old featherfans, tasselled dancecards, powdered with musk, a gaud of amber beads in her locked drawer.
  2. (obsolete) trick; jest; sport
  3. (obsolete) deceit; fraud; artifice
Related terms edit
Translations edit

Verb edit

gaud (third-person singular simple present gauds, present participle gauding, simple past and past participle gauded)

  1. (obsolete) To bedeck gaudily; to decorate with gauds or showy trinkets or colours; to paint.

Etymology 2 edit

Compare French gaudir (to rejoice).

Verb edit

gaud (third-person singular simple present gauds, present participle gauding, simple past and past participle gauded)

  1. To sport or keep festival.
    • 1579, Thomas North, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes:
      gauding with his familiars

Anagrams edit

Ilocano edit

Noun edit

gaud

  1. paddle; oar

Lubuagan Kalinga edit

Noun edit

gaud

  1. paddle; oar