gadling

English

Etymology

FromMiddle Englishgadeling(“companion in arms; man, fellow; a person of low birth; rascal, scoundrel; bastard; base, lowborn”),gadeling(“vagabond”),fromOld Englishgeaduling,gædeling(“kinsman, fellow, companion in arms, comrade”),fromProto-West Germanic*gaduling,fromProto-Germanic*gadulingaz,*gadilingaz(“relative, kinsman”),equivalent togad+‎-ling.Related toOld Englishġegada(“comrade, companion”).

Noun

gadling(pluralgadlings)

1. (obsolete)A companion in arms, fellow, comrade.
   • 15th c.,“Mactacio Abel[The Killing of Abel]”,inWakefield Mystery Plays;Re-edited in George England,Alfred W. Pollard,editors,The Towneley Plays(Early English Text SocietyExtra Series; LXXI), London:[…]Oxford University Press,1897,→OCLC,page10,line14:

     Gedlyngis,I am a fulle grete wat,

     (pleaseadd an English translationof this quotation)

2. Arovingvagabond;one whoroams
   • 1947,Thomas Bertram Costain,The Moneyman‎^[1],digitized edition, Doubleday, published2006,page57:

     I'm delighted to see you. You're as brown, mygadling,as though you had returned from another journey to the East with Jean de Village.

3. A man of humble condition; a fellow; a low fellow;lowborn;originallycomradeorcompanion,in a good sense, but later used in reproach
   • 1906,Rudyard Kipling,Puck of Pook's Hill‎^[2],HTML edition, The Gutenberg Project, published2008,page96:

     “Pest on him!” said De Aquila. “I have more to do than to shiver in the Great Hall for everygadlingthe King sends. Left he no word?”

4. Aspikeon agauntlet;agad.

References

“gadling”,inWebster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary,Springfield, Mass.:G. & C. Merriam,1913,→OCLC.

• Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia