Gaming-house, subs. (old).—A house of ill-repute—hell, tavern, or stews.
1611. Cotgrave, Dictionarie, Berlan, a common tippling house, a house of gaming, or of any other disorder.
Gammer, subs. (old).—An old wife; a familiar address; the correlative of gaffer (q.v.).
1551. Gammer Gurton’s Needle (Title).
1706. Hudibras Redivivus, Part VI. And monkey faces, yawns, and stammers, Delude the pious dames and gammers To think their mumbling guides precation So full of heavenly inspiration.
1842. Tennyson, The Goose. Ran Gaffer, stumbled gammer.
Gamming, subs. (nautical).—A whaleman’s term for the visits paid by crews to each other at sea.
1884. G. A. Sala, in Illus. Lon. News, July 19, p. 51, c. 2. When two or more American whalers meet in mid-ocean, and there are no whales in sight, it is customary to tack topsails and exchange visits. This social intercourse the whalemen call gamming … I cannot help fancying that ‘gam’ is in greater probability an abbreviation of the Danish ‘gammen,’ sport, or that it has something to do with the nautical ‘gammoning,’ the lasting by which the bowsprit is bound firmly down to the cutwater.
1890. Century, Aug. To gam means to gossip. The word occurs again and again in the log-books of the old whalers.
Gammon, subs. (colloquial).—1. Nonsense; humbug; deceit. Sometimes gammon and spinach. No gammon = no error, no lies.