gest, pl. gests, the various stages of a journey, esp. of a royal progress; ‘In Jacob’s gests Succoth succeeds . . . to Peniel’, Fuller, Pisgah, v. 3. 147; ‘The King’s gests’, L’Estrange, Charles I, 126. Gest, the time allotted for a halt, Winter’s Tale, i. 2. 41. A later form of [gist], q.v.
gest(e, story, narrative. Spenser, F. Q. i. 10. 15; exploit, Mother Hubberd’s Tale, 978. ME. geste, romance, tale; pl. histories, occurrences (Chaucer). Anglo-F. geste, L. (res) gesta, a thing performed.
gets, pl. the jesses of a hawk; ‘Her gets, her jesses and her bells’, Heywood, A Woman killed, i. 3 (Sir Charles). Both gets and jess are plural forms of OF. and Prov. get (F. jet), ‘a cast, a throw’, cp. F. jeter, to throw. The form jesses is a double plural.
giambeux, armour for the legs. Spenser, F. Q. ii. 6. 29. ME. jambeux (Chaucer, C. T. B. 2065). Deriv. of F. jambe, the leg (Cotgr.).
gib, a familiar name for a cat. Hamlet, iii. 4. 190. Also, Gib-cat, ‘I am as melancholy as a gib-cat’, 1 Hen. IV, i. 2. 83. Hence, Your Gibship, Beaumont and Fl., Scornful Lady, v. 1. ‘Gib’ and ‘Gib-cat’ are in prov. use in the north, and down to Hereford, in the sense of a male cat, gen. one that has been castrated (EDD.).
gibbed cat, gen. taken to mean a castrated cat. Rowley, A Match at Midnight, ii. 1 (Jarvis).
gibbridge, unintelligible talk, idle talk. Drayton, Pol. xii. 227; ‘Bagois, gibridge, strange talk, idle tattle’, Cotgrave. A Yorksh. pronunciation of gibberish (EDD.).
Giberalter, ? a Gibraltar monkey, an ape, Merry Devil, i. 2. 14. See NED.
gig (with hard g), to produce another like itself, but smaller. Only used metaphorically, and derived from ME. gigge, a whipping-top. See NED., which has: ‘The verb seems to denote the action of some kind of gig, or whipping-top of peculiar construction, having inside it a smaller gig of the same shape, which was thrown out by the effect of rapid rotation.’ Hence, ‘The first [lampoon] produces, still, a second jig [i.e. lampoon]; You whip them out, like schoolboys [i.e. as schoolboys do], till they gig’; Dryden, Prologue to Amphitryon, 20, 21.
giggots, slices, small pieces. Chapman, tr. of Iliad, i. 452; ii. 372; spelt giggets, Fletcher, Double Marriage, iii. 2 (Boatswain). F. gigot, a leg of mutton. See NED.