gaud

• IPA^(key): /ɡɔːd/

• Audio (RP)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔːd
• Homophones: god (in accents with the cot-caught merger), gored (in non-rhotic accents with the horse-hoarse merger), gourd (in non-rhotic accents with the pour-poor merger)

From Middle English gaude, gawde (“jest, prank, trick; ornamental bead in a rosary, trinket, bauble”). Compare Middle English gaudy, gaudee, of the same meaning.

gaud (plural gauds)

1. A cheap showy trinket
   • c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:

     an idle gaud

   • 1912, The World's Wit and Humor, page 176:

     A Libyan longing took us, and we would have chosen, if we could, to bear a strand of grotesque beads, or a handful of brazen gauds, and traffic them for some sable maid with crisp locks, whom, uncoffling from the captive train beside the desert, we should make to do our general housework forever, through the right of lawful purchase.

   • 1922, T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (published 1926)

     Dalmeny lent me red tabs, Evans his brass hat; so that I had the gauds of my appointment in the ceremony of the Jaffa gate, which for me was the supreme moment of the war.

   • 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses, Part I, episode 1:

     Her secrets: old featherfans, tasselled dancecards, powdered with musk, a gaud of amber beads in her locked drawer.

2. (obsolete) trick; jest; sport
3. (obsolete) deceit; fraud; artifice

• gaudy

gaud (third-person singular simple present gauds, present participle gauding, simple past and past participle gauded)

1. (obsolete) To bedeck gaudily; to decorate with gauds or showy trinkets or colours; to paint.
   • c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:

     Nicely gauded cheeks.

Compare French gaudir (“to rejoice”).

gaud (third-person singular simple present gauds, present participle gauding, simple past and past participle gauded)

1. To sport or keep festival.
   • 1579, Thomas North, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes:

     gauding with his familiars

• Dagu, Guad.

gaud

1. paddle; oar

gaud

1. paddle; oar