Word of the Day for Tuesday, September 6, 2011
gammon \GAM-uhn\, verb:
1. To deceive.
noun:
1. In backgammon, a victory in which the winner throws off all his or her pieces before the opponent throws off any.
verb:
1. To win a gammon (in the game of backgammon) over.
noun:
1. A smoked or cured ham.
2. Deceitful nonsense.
"Come," said Perrot to Luned, stopping short; "we will gammon him with a silver bit or so."
-- Ernest Rhys, The whistling maid: A romance
It is all very well for preachers and philosophers to try to gammon people into making the best of a bad lot; but there is a sort of poverty which does nothing but degrade.
-- Justin McCarthy, My enemy's daughter: A novel
This sense of gammon owes its meaning to the Middle English gamen, the ancestor of the Modern English "game."
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