2022-04-20
ศัพท์ น่าสับสน - Set – G – gaff & gaffe
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Dictionary.com:
ออกเสียง gaff & gaffe = “GAF”
Common Error in English Usage Dictionary:
Gaffe is a French word meaning
“embarrassing mistake,”
and should not be mixed up with “gaff”:
= a large hook.
Abused, Confused, & Misused Words by Mary Embree:
gaff
= a metal hook fastened to a pole;
= to cheat; fleece;
= harsh treatment or criticism:
All the gaff he had to take made him even more reclusive.
Not to be confused with:
gaffe
= a social blunder;
= faux pas:
His sudden outburst of anger was an unfortunate gaffe.
Dictionary.com:
ORIGIN OF GAFF
First recorded in 1275–1325; Middle English,
from Middle French gaffe, gaff,
from Provençal gaf “hook, gaff,” noun derivative of gafar “to seize” (compare Medieval Latin gaffare ),
probably from unattested Germanic (Visigothic) gaff-,
perhaps derivative from base of Gothic giban “to give”;
see give
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
History and Etymology for gaff
Noun (1)
borrowed from French gaffe,
going back to Middle French,
borrowed from Old Occitan gaf,
probably derivative of gafar "to seize," of obscure origin
NOTE: Middle English gaffe, occurring in the early 14th-century
"Kildare Poems" (British Library MS Harley 913) and
glossed "iron hook" in the Middle English Dictionary,
is of uncertain relation to the modern word.
It predates attestations of the word in French.
Random House Kerneman Webster’s college Dictionary:
Gaff v.t. slang
= to cheat, fleece
noun
= Informal. harsh treatment, criticism, or ridicule
(used esp. in the phrase stand the gaff).
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Trending: ‘gaffe’
Why are people looking up gaffe?
The first of the 2020 Presidential debates had not yet begun,
and already lookups for the word gaffe were spiking on September 29, 2020,
in anticipation (some might say salivation) of one of the candidates
committing one of these.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s wife, Jill Biden,
shut down a question Sunday from CNN’s Jake Tapper about any “gaffe”
her husband may make.
“Oh, you can't even go there,” Jill Biden told the “State of the Union” host
when he led into a question by noting that the former vice president
“has been known to make the occasional gaffe.”
— Rebecca Klar, The Hill, 27 Sept. 2020
What does gaffe mean?
We define gaffe as
either “a social or diplomatic blunder"
or “a noticeable mistake.”
It is borrowed from French,
and is believed to be a sense development of the same word (gaffe),
going back to Middle French, and
which was borrowed from Old Occitan gaf
(it was probably derivative of gafar, meaning "to seize," of obscure origin).
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Words of the Week
Merriam-Webster's Words of the Week - Jan. 21
The words that defined the week ending January 21st, 2022
Minor’ & ‘Gaffe’
Minor and gaffe were both in the news last week,
after President Biden made a statement using the former word
in a manner that many people felt qualified as an example of the latter.
It was 28 minutes into Joe Biden's press conference
when the gaffe came - and it was a jaw-dropper.
Especially if you were watching in Kyiv or the Kremlin.
The US President appeared to say that,
if Vladimir Putin were to make only a "minor incursion" into Ukraine,
then Russia would not face devastating sanctions.
— Nick Allen, The Telegraph (London, Eng.), 20 Jan. 2022
The relevant sense of minor is defined as
“inferior in importance, size, or degree :
comparatively unimportant”
(assuming that Biden was not making an obscure reference
to a musical sense,
such as “having a minor third above the root,”
or an educational one,
such as “of or relating to an academic subject
requiring fewer courses than a major”).
This word comes from the Latin minor, meaning “smaller, less, inferior.”
Gaffe may be defined as either
“a social or diplomatic blunder”
or “a noticeable mistake.”
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Words of the Week - April 1
’Gaffe’
On the other side of the political aisle,
President Biden caused the word gaffe to spike in lookups,
after he finished a speech with comments on Vladimir Putin
that some felt were geopolitically inapt.
US President Joe Biden was once again spotted
carrying a cheat sheet containing talking points
related to his comments on Vladimir Putin,
in what appeared to be an attempt at avoiding another gaffe.
— Stuti Mishra, The Independent (London, Eng.), 29 Mar. 2022
We define gaffe as either
“a social or diplomatic blunder”
or “a noticeable mistake.”
It is borrowed from French, and is believed to be
a sense development of the same word (gaffe),
going back to Middle French, and which was
borrowed from Old Occitan gaf
(it was probably derivative of gafar, meaning "to seize," of obscure origin).
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Word history
The term shandy itself is a shortening of shandygaff,
which first appears in 19th-century England.
Although we don't know for sure
how the name shandygaff came about,
we are fairly certain that
the concept of a beer cocktail traces back centuries earlier.
And we are definitely sure that a shandygaff was enjoyed.
Charles Dickens once commented that
it was the perfect "alliance between beer and pop."
In The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green
—an 1853 novel about a first-year undergraduate at Oxford University
written under the pseudonym Cuthbert M. Bede
—Mr. Green states that a friend taught him
"to make shandy-gaff and sherry-cobbler …: oh, it's capital!"
By late-19th century, shandygaff is shortened to shandy,
and creative imbibers begin experimenting.
Refreshing, effervescent lemonade
becomes an early substitute for ginger beer.
Other mixers such as orange and grapefruit juice soon follow,
along with cider.
Shandygaff is a compound word,
but as to why the base words came together
(or in what senses they are used in) is a mystery.
Inevitably, there has been speculation.
Some people have suggested that
gaff is a portmanteau of ginger and half.
That's possible, but what about
the other multiple uses of gaff
that enter the English language by mid-19th century?
Quite possibly, one of those could have been
applied jocularly for the beverage's name.
The most common use of gaff is
as the name for the spear or hook
used for lifting heavy fish out of the water.
Another gaff refers to loud laughter
(as in "his resounding gaffs filled the room"
or "he gaffed merrily")
—senses found in dialectal Scottish English.
There is also gaff meaning "a fair"
or "a place of lower-class amusement
(as at a theater or music hall)."
In a 1918 collection of essays entitled, fittingly, Shandygaff,
American writer Christopher Morley
links the word shandygaff to the lower classes,
"Shandygaff is a very refreshing drink,
being a mixture of bitter ale or beer and ginger-beer,
commonly drunk by the lower classes in England,
and by strolling tinkers, low church parsons, newspaper men,
journalists, and prizefighters."
As early as the 17th century,
shandy was also being used in dialectal English as an adjective
to refer to people who were wild, boisterous, or slightly crazy.
Perhaps, the "place of lower-class amusement" sense of gaff
and this sense of shandy were blended together.
It's certainly not unreasonable to think that people drinking
shandygaffs in lower-class establishments got a little wild
—we just need to find evidence corroborating this etymology.
