• gloat •
Pronunciation: glowt • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb, intransitive (no direct object)
Meaning: 1. To take immense malicious satisfaction in something (used with the prepositions at and over). 2. To gaze at something with intense satisfaction (with the prepositions on, over or upon).
Notes: Although we don't encounter this sense any more in the US, the Oxford English Dictionary still lists meaning No. 2 above. We include it because it is the bridge between the sense of the word most frequently used today and the word's previous meaning of looking (see Word History). Someone who gloats is a gloater engaged in the process of gloating. Gloating may also be used as an adjective (the gloating father) and an adverb if properly suffixed (to tell of his wife's success gloatingly).
In Play: Gloating is a malicious though not evil sort of pride: "Farnsworth gloated over receiving the promotion rather than Snodgrass until he discovered that it came with no raise." Use of the second meaning is slowly diminishing, which is why we bring it up: "Natalie Cladd gloated on her new $4000 gown several minutes before putting it on." We hope it will return to our conversations and remain there.
Word History: When you gloat you shine, perhaps overshine, from some accomplishment so it is not surprising that today's Good Word originates in the Proto-Indo-European word for shine, ghol-/ghel-. The Os and Es in this type of root often get lost along the way, in this case resulting in ghl-. This form has a superfluity of great-grandchildren in all the English words beginning on GL referring to light, such as gleam, glitter, glisten, glare, glimmer, and glow. The forms with O and E became gold and yellow in English, Gold and gelb "yellow" in German. Over the years this root also took on various senses related to "to look" in the Germanic languages. It turns up as glotzen "to stare, gawk" in German and in some Swedish dialects it appears as glotta "to peep". English probably borrowed one of these words for today's Good Word though the chain of evidence is broken.P=
GLOAT
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GLOAT
• The Good Dr. Goodword
The word Gloat
Related perhaps via pie Ghol thru the italoceltic branch to the ancient Welsh word goleuad meaning "shining?" ("Goleuad Caledwlch" was the name of a mythical famous sword, meaning "shining hard belly"-- to imply invinceable -- I think.)
Glory be to God for dappled things-
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Having read some German and a lot of technical German, I seem to have forgotten that gold in English means Gold in German. I thought it was Edelmetall, which it is, along with the other noble metals. Even people who are old as dirt can learn or be reminded by the Good Doctor. Then there is German Geld which I assume is derived from German Gold. Compare Edelmetall to Edelweiss -the pure white flower of Austria from "The Sound of Music".
It is dark at night, but the Sun will come up and then we can see.
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“Pied Beauty"
By Gerard Manley Hopkins, a nineteenth century English Jesuit Priest
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
By Gerard Manley Hopkins, a nineteenth century English Jesuit Priest
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
It is dark at night, but the Sun will come up and then we can see.
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