Citations:gawm

English citations of gawm

variant and synonym of "gaum" = "smear"

• 1873, Mark Twain, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today:

  "He's tuck an gawmed it all over on the inside with plarsterin'."

either "smear" or "gum"

• 1901, J. Breckenridge Ellis, With the Children, in The Christian Evangelist, volume 38, page 1371:

  "Harry," exclaimed Zep as he soaked up the water in the large white bed-cover, […] [Emily said:] "Oh, Zep, that's aunt Sarelda's beautiful white spread you are gawming up so dreadful! What will she say?"

variant and synonym of "gum"

• 1910, Thomas Neal Ivey, Bildad Akers: His Book: The Notions and Experiences, page 127:

  […] and I seed whar that purty rock floor was all gawmed up with terbaccer juce and I beleeve in my soul I could have counted five hundred seegar eends on the grass.

"to divine, to recognize"

• 1893, Keighley Snowden, Tales of the Yorkshire Wolds, page 153:

  "Well, sir," said Willie, jerking his head sideways at the window, as he might have done in allusion to somebody who was waiting for him in the garden, "partly Aw do, an' partly Aw've gawmed [divined] it."

"to understand"

• 1703, Ralph Thoresby, Letter, quoted in The English Dialect Dictionary (1900 edition):

  Do you gawm me?

???

• 1904, John Coleman, Fifty Years of an Actors' Life, volume 2, page 402:

  Then an Olympian exclaimed to his “butty,” “Say, Dick, I'm gawmed if the fat 'un ain't the real blackamoor!” To which Dick responded, “Naa, lad, that canna be, for t'other chap's a d——d sight blacker.”

• (Can we date this quote?), Tales and Sketches of Lancashire Life:

  "By th' makkurs, Bet, but I thowt thy mouth had gawmt a porritch spoon too oft fort' ha' said sich fine words as thoose."