gadling

From Middle English gadeling (“companion in arms; man, fellow; a person of low birth; rascal, scoundrel; bastard; base, lowborn”), gadeling (“vagabond”), from Old English geaduling, gædeling (“kinsman, fellow, companion in arms, comrade”), from Proto-West Germanic *gaduling, from Proto-Germanic *gadulingaz, *gadilingaz (“relative, kinsman”), equivalent to gad +‎ -ling. Related to Old English gada (“comrade, companion”).

gadling (plural gadlings)

1. (obsolete) A companion in arms, fellow, comrade.
   • 15th c., “Mactacio Abel [The Killing of Abel]”, in Wakefield Mystery Plays; Re-edited in George England, Alfred W. Pollard, editors, The Towneley Plays (Early English Text Society Extra Series; LXXI), London: […] Oxford University Press, 1897, →OCLC, page 10, line 14:

     Gedlyngis, I am a fulle grete wat,

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

2. A roving vagabond; one who roams
   • 1947, Thomas Bertram Costain, The Moneyman‎, digitized edition, Doubleday, published 2006, page 57:

     I'm delighted to see you. You're as brown, my gadling, 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; originally comrade or companion, in a good sense, but later used in reproach
   • 1906, Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook's Hill‎, HTML edition, The Gutenberg Project, published 2008, page 96:

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

4. A spike on a gauntlet; a gad.

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

• Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia