1848. Ruxton, Far West, p. 145. The three remaining brothers were absent from the Mission … Fray Jose, gallivanting at Pueblo de los Angeles.
1863. Norton, Lost and Saved, p. 255. A pretty story, if, when her services were most wanted by the person who paid for them, she was to be gadding and gallivanting after friends of her own.
1865. M. E. Braddon, Henry Dunbar, ch. x. A pretty thing it would have been if your pa had come all the way from India to find his only daughter gallivanting at a theaytre.
1870. London Figaro, 6 Dec. You’re never content but when you’re galavanting about somewhere or other. [[105]]
Gallivate, verb (American).—To frisk; to ‘figure about’; cf., Gallivant.
Gallon. What’s a gallon of rum among one? phr. (American).—The retort sarcastic; applied, e.g., to those with ‘eyes too big for their stomach’; to disproportionate ideas of the fitness of things, and so forth.
Gallon Distemper, subs. phr. (common).—1. Delirium tremens; (2.) the lighter after-effects of drinking.
English Synonyms.—(1) For the former, barrel-fever; black-dog; blue-devils; blue Johnnies (Australian); B. J’s. (idem.); blues; bottle-ache; D. T.; horrors; jim-jams; jumps; pink-spiders; quart-mania; rams; rats; shakes; snakes in the boots; trembles; triangles; uglies.
2. For the latter: a head; hot-coppers; a mouth; a touch of the brewer; a sore head (Scots).
French Synonyms.—Avoir mal aux cheveux (familiar = the hair-ache); les papillons noirs (Cf., pink spiders; also = hypochondria); avoir fumé dans une pipe neuve (= sick of a new clay).