gouge

See also: Gouge and gougé

English
WOTD – 27 May 2019

Etymology
The blade of this wood gouge (sense 1.1) curves upwards so that it can be used to cut grooves
A gouge (sense 1.1) being used to make a linocut

From Middle English gouge (“chisel with concave blade; gouge”), from Old French gouge, goi (“gouge”), from Late Latin goia,[1] gubia, gulbia (“chisel; piercer”), borrowed from Gaulish *gulbiā, from Proto-Celtic *gulbā, *gulbi, *gulbīnos (“beak, bill”). The English word is cognate with Italian gorbia, gubbia (“ferrule”), Old Breton golb, Old Irish gulba (“beak”), Portuguese goiva, Scottish Gaelic gilb (“chisel”), Spanish gubia (“chisel, gouge”), Welsh gylf (“beak; pointed instrument”), gylyf (“sickle”).[2]

The verb is derived from the noun.[3]

Pronunciation

Noun

gouge (countable and uncountable, plural gouges)

  1. Senses relating to cutting tools.
    1. A chisel with a curved blade for cutting or scooping channels, grooves, or holes in wood, stone, etc.
      • 1823, [James Fenimore Cooper], chapter VIII, in The Pioneers, or The Sources of the Susquehanna; […], volume I, New York, N.Y.: Charles Wiley;  […], →OCLC, page 118:
        The "steeple" was a little cupola, reared on the very centre of the roof, on four tall pillars of pine, that were fluted with a gouge, and loaded with mouldings.
      • 1842 January 22, “On Printing Posting-bills”, in The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, volume XI (New Series), number 626, London: Charles Knight & Co., →OCLC, page 30, column 2:
        The cutting [of letter blocks] is effected by chisels and gouges of the usual kinds, and is the work of a class of artizans called 'Wood letter Cutters,' or 'Wood-type Cutters.'
      • 1922 August, H. Hambley Tregoning, “A Model 18-Footer Yacht, and How to Build and Sail Her”, in The Boy’s Own Paper, volume XLV, part 10, London: “Boy’s Own Paper” Office, […], →OCLC, page 697, column 1:
        Now hollow out the inside of the boat with a gouge or gouges. ("Firmer" gouges, ground on the outside of the curve, are used. "Paring" gouges are useless.)
      • 1985 April, Rosario Capotosto, “Become a Woodturning Expert: Part One”, in John A. Linkletter, editor, Popular Mechanics, volume 162, number 4, New York, N.Y.: The Hearst Corporation, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 104, column 2:
        The six most common woodturning tools you should know about are: gouge, skew, parting tool, spear-point, round-nose, and flat-nose. The gouge is a hollow, round-nose chisel used to rough-cut blanks into cylinders and for making cove cuts. Gouges can be used for cutting or scraping.
    2. A bookbinder's tool with a curved face, used for blind tooling or gilding.
      • 1835, John Andrews Arnett [pseudonym; John Hannett], “Combination of Tools”, in Bibliopegia; or, The Art of Bookbinding, in All Its Branches. […], London: Richard Groombridge; Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd; Dublin: W. F. Wakeman; New York, N.Y.: W. Jackson, →OCLC, part II (Of Finishing), page 128:
        In plate II. are design for two backs of books. The first figure, which presents an appearance of exceeding richness, is executed with one sole tool, viz. No. 10, and a small gouge for the sides of the lettering-piece.
    3. An incising tool that cuts blanks or forms for envelopes, gloves, etc., from leather, paper, or other materials.
      • [1875, Edward H[enry] Knight, “Gouge”, in Knight’s American Mechanical Dictionary: […], volumes II (Ena–Pan), New York, N.Y.: J. B. Ford and Company, →OCLC, page 997, column 1:
        Gouge. […] A shaped incising-tool used for cutting out forms or blanks for gloves, envelopes, or other objects cut to a shape from fabric, leather, or paper.]
  2. A cut or groove, as left by a gouge or something sharp.
    The nail left a deep gouge in the tire.
    • 1878 April, “How Lead-pencils are Made”, in J[osiah] G[ilbert] Holland, editor, Scribner’s Monthly, an Illustrated Magazine for the People, volume XV, number 6, New York, N.Y.: Scribner & Co., […], →OCLC, page 808:
      The planing-machine, on the contrary, uses revolving knives, which make a succession of little gouges in the wood; these gouges, which would otherwise leave the surface very irregular, are made to leave it tolerably smooth by following one another so closely that the gouges become one long gouge or cut; [...]
    • 2015, Stephanie Butland, Letters to My Husband, London: Black Swan, Transworld Publishers, →ISBN, page 250:
      He makes himself look at his daughter's changing body the way he might look at a gouge on his own leg, forcing himself to examine every detail until he's not looking at a horror but a fact; something that needs fixing.
    • 2015, Brian Staveley, chapter 4, in The Providence of Fire (Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne; book 2), London: Tor, →ISBN, page 60:
      He squinted through frozen lashes, trying to make better sense of the valley beneath him, a gouge running east to west, so deep and narrow he could only see the bottom when they passed directly overhead.
  3. (originally US, colloquial) An act of gouging.
  4. (slang) A cheat, a fraud; an imposition.
    Synonym: swindle
  5. (slang) An impostor.
  6. (mining) Soft material lying between the wall of a vein and the solid vein of ore.
    • 1869, Rossiter W[orthington] Raymond, “Giant Powder and Common Powder”, in The Mines of the West: A Report to the Secretary of the Treasury, New York, N.Y.: J. B. Ford and Company […], →OCLC, page 34:
      At some of the mines on the great Mother Lode, where hundreds of tons are not unfrequently thrown down at a blast, and where a wide, soft "gouge" along one wall enables the minder to keep two or three sides of the rock free, and give the powder the greatest opportunity to "lift" without waste of power, the cost of drilling and blasting per ton is so low that a reduction of one-third, even if it could be made, would not greatly affect the general count; […]
    • 1930, Edward Wilber Berry, “Systematic Descriptions”, in Revision of the Lower Eocene Wilcox Flora of the Southeastern States: With Descriptions of New Species, Chiefly from Tennessee and Kentucky ([United States] Geological Survey Professional Paper; 156), Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 83, column 1:
      The geologic relations seen at the surface continue underground, but in addition 5 to 10 feet of gouge, dipping 68°E, is found to separate the serpentine from the ore zone. The gouge is not sufficiently resistant to erosion to crop out. […] A "bull" quartz vein occurs in places along the contact of the gouge and the ore zone. It does not constitute ore.
  7. (US, military, slang, uncountable) Information.
    • 2005, Jay A. Stout, To Be a U.S. Naval Aviator, page 63:
      As all naval aviators have learned at one time or another in their careers, “There's plenty of bad gouge out there," and it has, does, and will get the unwary fliers in trouble.
    • 2013, Douglas Waller, Air Warriors: The Inside Story of the Making of a Navy Pilot, page 89:
      The Marines and “Coasties” (the nickname for Coast Guard students) were reputed to have good gouge on each class's test. Rumor had it that the Marines had inside information on the questions for the next day's FRR test, […]

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

gouge (third-person singular simple present gouges, present participle gouging, simple past and past participle gouged)

  1. (transitive) To make a groove, hole, or mark in by scooping with or as if with a gouge.
    Synonyms: engrave, grave, incise
    Japanese and Chinese printers used to gouge characters in wood.
    • 1950, François É[mile] Matthes, “The Domes”, in Fritiof Fryxell, editor, The Incomparable Valley: A Geologic Interpretation of the Yosemite, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Calif., London: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 127:
      Imperfect examples of concave shells are to be seen in the salient of El Capitan, which is itself an imperfect dome, not wholly massive throughout, that has been vigorously gouged by the Yosemite Glacier.
    • 1977 January, Penelope Angell, “Handmade with Care: Woodcarving”, in John A. Linkletter, editor, Popular Mechanics, volume 147, number 1, New York, N.Y.: The Hearst Corporation, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 94, column 2:
      Gouges [...] are made of steel that is curved to varying degrees to "gouge" out excess wood.
    • 2015, Kathleen Cook Waldron, chapter 12, in Kathy Stinson, editor, Between Shadows, Regina, Sask.: Coteau Books, →ISBN, page 48:
      [W]e simply sit in silence and let the day's events roll around the room like farts in a school cafeteria. Dad breaks the spell when he gets up to retrieve his wood and starts gouging it for all he's worth.
  2. (transitive) To cheat or impose upon; in particular, to charge an unfairly or unreasonably high price.
    Synonyms: defraud, swindle
    The company has no competition, so it tends to gouge its customers.
    • 2008 November, William G. White, “The Physician’s Fee: A Historical Reflection”, in Eugene F. Diamond, editor, The Linacre Quarterly: Journal of the Catholic Medical Association, volume 75, number 4, Wynnewood, Pa.: Catholic Medical Association, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 299:
      [M]any hospitals have essentially abandoned any serious effort to raise funds from donors. They could, like universities, conduct fund-raising campaigns and establish endowments to cover the shortfall caused by widespread fraud (i.e., the false promise by government and insurance to pay patients' medical expenses), but instead they mercilessly gouge their uninsured patients.
    • 2014, Mia Ross, Sugar Plum Season, New York, N.Y.: Love Inspired Books, Harlequin, →ISBN, page 120:
      Women like Rachel sail through life wrapping men around their little fingers and gouging them for everything they've got.
  3. (transitive, intransitive) To dig or scoop (something) out with or as if with a gouge; in particular, to use a thumb to push or try to push the eye (of a person) out of its socket.
    • 1863 February 7, Henry Hancock, “On the Superiority of [François] Chopart’s Operation and Excision of the Ankle in All Cases Admitting of Their Performance”, in James G. Wakley, editor, The Lancet: A Journal of British and Foreign Medicine, Physiology, Surgery, Chemistry, Public Health, Criticism, and News, volume I, number VI (number 2058), London: Published by George Fall, […], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 143, column 1:
      The recorded cases in which the constituents of the joint were removed at different times, and those also in which the bones or portions of the bones were gouged away, do not by any means afford satisfactory results.
    • 1909 January 15, Wilfred Lewis, W[illia]m H. Taylor, “The Development of a High-speed Milling Cutter, with Inserted Blades, for High-powered Milling Machines”, in Herbert Page, Armistead Cay, editors, Page’s Weekly: An Illustrated Newspaper Devoted to the Engineering, Shipbuilding Iron and Steel Trades, volume XIV, number 227, London: [Herbert Page], →OCLC, page 112, column 1:
      In milling, a blade with this irregularity in front slope causes the cutter to drag on one side and gouge on the other.
    • 1930 November, Robert E[rvin] Howard, “Champ of the Forecastle”, in Jack O’Sullivan, editor, Fight Stories, volume 3, number 6, New York, N.Y.: Fight Stories, Inc., →OCLC; republished in Paul Herman, editor, Waterfront Fists and Others, Holicong, Pa.: Wildside Press, 2003, →ISBN, page 155:
      He tried to clinch and gouge, but another right hook to the jaw sent him down and out.
    • 2014, Eunice V. Johnson, “Shaping China’s Reform Movements, 1891–1910”, in Carol Lee Hamrin, editor, Timothy Richard’s Vision: Education and Reform in China, 1880–1910 (Studies in Chinese Christianity), Eugene, Or.: Pickwick Publications, Wipf and Stock Publishers, →ISBN, footnote 28, page 63:
      For some time, Christian missionaries had been falsely accused of kidnaping Chinese children, gouging out their eyes, and killing them.
  4. (intransitive) To use a gouge.

Derived terms

Translations
to cheat or impose upon — see cheat,‎ impose

References
  1. “gǒuǧe, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 25 January 2019.
  2. “gouge, n.1”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1900; “gouge”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
  3. “gouge, v.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1900.

Further reading

French

Etymology

Inherited from Old French gouge, from Latin gulbia (Late Latin gubia), of Gaulish or Basque origins.

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ɡuʒ/
  • Audio(file)
  • Rhymes: -uʒ

Noun

gouge f (plural gouges)

  1. gouge (groove)
  2. gouge (tool)
  3. (obsolete) female servant
  4. (archaic) prostitute
    • 1857, Charles Baudelaire, Bribes - Damnation:
      On peut les comparer encore à cette auberge, / Espoir des affamés, où cognent sur le tard, / Blessés, brisés, jurant, priant qu’on les héberge, / L’écolier, le prélat, la gouge et le soudard.
      They can also be compared to this inn, / Hope to the starved, where in the night knock, / Injured, broken, cursing, begging to be lodged, / The schoolboy, the prelate, the prostitute and the soldier.

Verb

gouge

  1. inflection of gouger:
    1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
    2. second-person singular imperative

Further reading

Old French

Etymology

From Late Latin gubia, from Latin gulbia.

Noun

gouge oblique singular, f (oblique plural gouges, nominative singular gouge, nominative plural gouges)

  1. gouge (tool)
  2. (chiefly derogatory) woman

Descendants
  • English: gouge
  • French: gouge

References
  • Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle (1881) (gouge, supplement)
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