1859. Boston Post, 10 Dec. Senator Seward is gallivanting gaily
about Europe. Now at Compiègne, saying soft things to the Empress
and studying despotism, now treading the battle-field of Waterloo,
then back at Paris, and so on.
1871. C. D. Warner, My Summer in a Garden. More than half the Lima
beans, though on the most attractive sort of poles, which budded
like Aaron’s rod, went gallivanting off to the neighboring grape
trellis.
1848. Ruxton, Far West, p. 145. The three remaining brothers were
absent from the Mission ... Fray Jose, gallivanting at Pueblo de
los Angeles.
1863. Norton, Lost and Saved, p. 255. A pretty story, if, when her
services were most wanted by the person who paid for them, she was
to be gadding and gallivanting after friends of her own.
1865. M. E. Braddon, Henry Dunbar, ch. x. A pretty thing it would
have been if your pa had come all the way from India to find his
only daughter gallivanting at a theaytre.
1870. London Figaro, 6 Dec. You’re never content but when you’re
galavanting about somewhere or other.
Gallivate, verb (American).—To frisk; to ‘figure about’; cf.,
Gallivant.
Gallon. What’s a gallon of rum among one? phr. (American).—The retort
sarcastic; applied, e.g., to those with ‘eyes too big for their
stomach’; to disproportionate ideas of the fitness of things, and so
forth.
Gallon Distemper, subs. phr. (common).—1. Delirium tremens; (2.) the
lighter after-effects of drinking.
English Synonyms.—(1) For the former, barrel-fever; black-dog;
blue-devils; blue Johnnies (Australian); B. J’s. (idem.); blues;
bottle-ache; D. T.; horrors; jim-jams; jumps; pink-spiders;
quart-mania; rams; rats; shakes; snakes in the boots; trembles;
triangles; uglies.
2. For the latter: a head; hot-coppers; a mouth; a touch of the brewer;
a sore head (Scots).
French Synonyms.—Avoir mal aux cheveux (familiar = the hair-ache); les
papillons noirs (Cf., pink spiders; also = hypochondria); avoir fumé
dans une pipe neuve (= sick of a new clay).
Galloper, subs. (old).—1. A blood horse; a hunter.
1811. Lexicon Balatronicum, s.v. The toby gill clapped his bleeders
to his galloper and tipped the straps the double.