• gadabout •
Printable Version Pronunciation: gæd-ê-bawt • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Someone who gads about, a wanderer, someone who roves about idly out of curiosity, often spreading rumor and gossip in their wake.
Notes: Today's word comes from the phrase "to gad about", where gad itself has come to mean "to wander from place to place without a particular destination". It is a perfectly guileless word, spelled and pronounced exactly as it should be.
In Play: Gadabouts are basically people who cannot stay at home for long periods, who have to move about: "Oprah who? I'm afraid I'm an incorrigible gadabout who doesn't spend time watching TV." Some gadabouts, however, gallivant around spreading rumors, so this word makes a less jarring alternative to gossip: "I heard from the town gadabout, Miles Overland, that Willy Leaver isn't speaking to his wife."
Word History: How did two such oxymoronic words as spend and thrift manage to join up in a word meaning "a financial wastrel"? This word first appeared in print in the first decade of the 17th century. At that time the meaning of thrift was "savings, net worth, wealth", a meaning still alive today in the phrase thrift institutions (savings and loan associations). Someone who spends that kind of thrift for no good reason foolishly risks his or her future, hence the pejorative connotation of spendthrift. Thrift was originally the noun of the verb thrive, as gift is a noun from give. Like gift, the meaning of thrift floated away from the meaning of the verb it was historically derived from. (Thank you Gary Parnham of Boston for spending the time it took to add to our lexical thrift by suggesting today's odd little word.)
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