gralloch

English

Etymology

From Scottish Gaelic grealach (“entrails”), from Proto-Celtic *gre-lach, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰer- (“bowels”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡɹæləx/, /ˈɡɹælək/

Noun

gralloch (uncountable)

1. (Scotland, rare) The entrails or offal of a dead deer, especially when removed. Also the entrails of other wild animals, when removed.

Verb

gralloch (third-person singular simple present grallochs, present participle gralloching, simple past and past participle gralloched)

1. (Scotland, rare) (transitive) To gut or eviscerate a deer, or other game animal.
   • 1896, Neil Munro, “The Red Hand”, in The Lost Pibroch‎^[3], W. Blackwood and Sons:

     A hand's as easy to cut as a finger for a man who has gralloched deer with a keen sgian-dubh.

   • 1977, Angela Carter, The Passion of New Eve:

     On our mattress in the secret nights, the girls whispered to me how he’d been watching her in a revival of Emma Bovary in an art-house in Berkeley and Tristessa’s eyes, eyes of a stag about to be gralloched, had fixed directly upon his and held them.

   • 2012, Simon Armitage, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight‎^[4], page 64:

     Then the beasts were prised apart at the breast,
     and they went to work on the gralloching again,
     riving open the front as far as the hind-fork,
     fetching out the offal, then with further purpose
     filleting the ribs in the recognised fashion.

The education committee report was always going to be the big one. Now it's out and ministers didn't entirely escape criticism. The HMI was, at last, deemed partly culpable. The SQA was predictably gralloched.

— The Herald (Scotland), December 9t 2000.

Verb

gralloch (third-person singular simple present grallochs, present participle grallochin, simple past and past participle gralloched, grallocht)

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Further reading

• MacBain, Alexander; Mackay, Eneas (1911), “gralloch”, in An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language‎^[5], Stirling, →ISBN