21 October 2020
From the start, let me say that this entry has been the most complicated one I’ve faced to date—not the most difficult, but the most complicated. The Oxford English Dictionary has six separate entries for the noun gig and seven for the verb. And these different senses of the word overlap and influence one another.
There are three main semantic strands in gig: 1) a frivolous woman or an unstable platform; 2) a spear or harpoon; and 3) a trick or job.
The oldest of these senses is that of a frivolous woman. The origin is unknown, and this sense is not used today, but it gave rise to a sense that is and influenced the form of the second main strand, that of a harpoon. Gig appears in the thirteenth century in the text known as Ancrene Wisse or Ancrene Riwle, a manual (rule) for female monastics and anchoresses written c.1230. Here it is used to as an adjective to describe coquettish laughter. From the manuscript Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 402:
[Leccherie] is o feole i-dealet: ful wil to thet fulthe with skiles yettunge, helpen othre thider-ward, beo weote ant witnesse th'rof, hunti th'refter with wohunge, with toggunge, other with eni tollunge, with gigge lahtre, hore ehe, eanie lihte lates, with yeove, with tollinde word, other with luve-speche, cos, unhende grapunge, thet mei beon heaved sunne, luvie tide other stude for-te cumen i swuch keast, ant othre foreridles the me mot nede forbuhen, the i the muchele fulthe nule fenniliche fallen.
([Lechery] is divided into many parts: a foul desire for that filth with the reason's consent, to aid another on that path, to be a spectator and witness to it, to hunt after it with wooing, with erotic touch, or with any horseplay, with giggy laughter, whorish eye, any frivolous behavior, with gifts, with enticing words, or with love-talk, a kiss, indecent touching which may be a capital sin, to love the time or place to come into such an encounter, and other precursors which one must avoid—if they do not want to vilely fall into the great filth.)
About the same time it also appears in the sense of a woman, in the medieval romance Floris and Blauncheflur, written c.1250 with a copy surviving in the Auchinleck Manuscript (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates MS 19.2.1), which was copied c.1335. In the passage in question, Floris is being smuggled into a castle where his love, Blauncheflur, is being held:
The porter thoughte what to rede.
He let floures gaderen in the mede,
He wiste hit was the maidenes wille.
Two coupen he let of floures fille;
That was the rede that he thought tho:
Florice in that o coupe do.
Tweie gegges the coupe bere,
So hevi charged that wroth thai were.
Thai bad God yif him evel fin
That so mani floures dede therin.
(The porter considered what to counsel.
He let flowers be gathered in the meadow,
He knew it was the maidens’ desire.
Two baskets he let be filled with flowers;
That was the counsel that he thought though:
Floris was put in one basket.
Two gigs bore the basket,
so heavily loaded that they were angry.)
Somewhere along the way, the element fis- or fiz- was added to gig. What the fiz- signifies, if anything, is not known. From John Skelton’s poem The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng, about an alewife and written sometime before 1529. Here the sense is still that of a woman:
Than sterte forth a fy sgygge
And she brought a bore pygge
The flesshe there of was ranke
And her brethe strongely stanke
Yet or she went she dranke
And gat her great thanke
Of Elynour for her ware
That she thyder bare
To pay for her share
Put a pin in fizgig. It will become relevant again when we get to the harpoon sense.
Meanwhile, gig also started to appear in whirligig, a child’s top. From Promptorium parvulorum, an English-Latin dictionary written in 1440:
Whyrlegyge, Chyldys game: Giraculum.
A century and a half later, the toy could simply be referred to as a gig, without the whirly. From Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, the first quarto of which was copied in 1598:
O mee, with what strickt patience haue I sat,
To see a King transformed to a Gnat.
To see great Hercules whipping a Gigge,
And profound Sallomon to tune a Iigge.
And Nestor play at push-pin with the boyes,
And Crittick Tymon laugh at idle toyes.
The instability of a frivolous person or a child’s top gave rise to two senses of gig that are still in use today. There is that of a ship’s boat. From John Wolcot’s 1790 satirical poem Advice to the Future Laureat, which he published under the pseudonym of Peter Pindar:
Obliged not to one Poet’s Rhyme,
Important, down the stream of time,
Proud let me sail, or not at all:
Too proud for Verse to take in tow my Name;
Just like the Victory, or Fame,
That by its painter drags the Gig or Yawl.
(Victory and Fame are names of contemporary ships of the line.)
And around the same time, gig was being applied to another unstable vehicle, that of a horse-drawn, two-wheeled carriage. From the 1791 Annals of Horsemanship, which is a delightfully satirical take on how the eighteenth-century British middle class was obsessed with the behaviors and trappings that signaled class status:
That nothing may be wanting, I propose to appropriate a few pages to the art of sitting politely in carriages, with the most becoming attitudes adopted to each vehicle. Among others, the politest manner of airing, en famille, in a gig, accompanied with a husband and three children; and, as there is no situation wherein art cannot be advantageously employed, I shall give a few precepts of the most advantageous display of the person on a hay, pea, or dust cart.
The second main sense of gig has a very different trajectory. It comes from the Spanish fisga, meaning a spear or harpoon. The addition of the final / g / may have been influenced by the somewhat earlier and aforementioned fizgig
Fishgig appears by 1589 in Richard Hakluyt’s book about English voyages of discovery:
There were some of those Bonitoes, which being galled by a fisgig did follow our ship coming out of Guinea 500. leagues.
And by the eighteenth century, this sense of the word was being clipped to gig. From Robert Beverley’s 1705 History and Present State of Virginia:
At each end of the Canoe stands an Indian, with a Gig, or pointed Spear, setting the Canoe forward with the Butt-end of the Spear, as gently as he can, by that Means stealing upon the Fish, without any Noise, or disturbing of the Water. Then they with great Dexterity, dart these spears into the Fish, as so take ‘em.
And a century later gig was being used as a verb meaning to spear a fish. From the journal of Meriwether Lewis for 4 September 1803:
The water is so low and clear that we see a great number of Fish of different kinds, the Sturgeon, Bass, Cat fish, pike, &c. we fixed some spears after the indian method but have had too much to attend to of more importance than gigging fish.
In present-day usage, the verb meaning to fish or frog with a gig is primarily found in the southern United States. It’s also found in the cheer heard at Texas A&M University sporting events: Gig ‘em, Aggies!
The sense of spearing or stabbing gave rise to the military sense of gig meaning to receive a demerit or punishment or the demerit itself. This jargon sense appears in the World War II era. Damon Runyon notes it in his syndicated newspaper column of 7 September 1941 in which he allegedly speaks with new recruit:
I ses it seems to me I heard you was having plenty of trouble getting used to the Army and that they had you in the guardhouse a couple of times. Jerry ses No I was only gigged once.
And another syndicated piece, this time about how comedians Budd Abbott and Lou Costello had to learn Army slang during the production of their 1941 film Keep ‘Em Flying, defines the sense. From the 2 December 1941 Calgary Herald:
They learned that a recruit is a “jackpot.” To “pop up” is to come to attention. A “gig” is a faux pas and to be “gigged” is to be punished for same.
The third strand of gig, that of trick or job arises out of jig, the dance. That word appears in the middle of the sixteenth century and is of unknown origin. But by the end of that century, it was also being used in the theater to refer to an interlude, particularly a comic one, between acts of a play. From the interlude between the first and second acts of Robert Greene’s The Scottish Historie of Iames the Forth, Slaine at Flodden, published in 1598:
Here see I good fond actions in thy gyg,
And meanes to paint the worldes in constant waies
But turne thine ene, see which for I can command.
Slightly before the publication of Greene’s play, and about the same time as the play was probably first performed, we see jig being used to refer to a trick or swindle. From Thomas Nashe’s 1592 Pierce Penilesse:
Looke to it you Booksellers and Stationers, and let not your shops be infected with any such goose gyblets or stinking garbadge, as the Iygs of newsmongers, and especiallie such of you as frequent Westminster hall, let them be circumspect what dunghill papers they bring thither: for one bad pamphlet is enough to raise a damp that may poison a whole Tearme, or at the least a number of poore Clyents that haue no money to preuent ill aire by breaking their fasts ere they come thither.
And somewhat later we have another Greene associated with the stage, this one actor Thomas Greene, involved in the history of the word. The sense of gig as a swindle or con appears in John Cook’s Greenes Tu Quoque, which was published in 1614 but performed as early as 1611. This exchange between the characters of Sir Lyonell and Scattergood is about whether a merchant cheated Scattergood when he sold him a hat:
Lyo. Why but what Iigge is this?
Scat. Nay if I know father, would I were hangd, I am e'ne as Innocent as the Child new borne.
Lyo. I but sonne Bubble, where did you two buy your Felts?
Scat. Felts? By this light, mine is a good Beauer: It cost mee three pound this morning vpon trust.
Lyo. Nay, I thinke you had it vpon trust: for no man that has any shame in him, would take mony for it.
And we have this humorous item from the pages of The Sporting Magazine of September 1793, in which a dog-thief convinces a judge that he has not actually committed a crime because the statute in question prohibits stealing a dog, but he has actually taken a bitch, which is not against the law:
Justice. I insist upon it that, according to the true spirit of the statute, a dog and a bitch is exactly the same thing.
Prisoner. I dare you to convict me on the statute of 10 G. 3. The word bitch is not so much mentioned in it. I had the opinion of my brethren upon this gig, and bl—st me I don’t steal as many bitches as I come near.
The sense of jig or gig as a trick or swindle has faded from use, although it survives in fossilized form in the phrase the jig is up. But the sense of gig as a piece of light entertainment, a side-show act continued. From Helen Green’s 1908 collection of stories about vaudeville, The Maison de Shine:
“I’m the champion paper tearer of the West,” said Charlie.
“I pass,” said the Property Man. “What kind o’ gig is that?”
Charlie became sociable. He told them about his “act.”
He was not exactly in vaudeville, but on the front fringe of it. The managers of different stores hired him to work in their show windows. He made charming souvenirs by “tearing paper” into odd designs in view of the spectators, and ladies of the towns came in flocks to view his marvelous dexterity.
By the 1920s, musicians had picked up gig and started using it to refer to one-night stands at clubs and performance venues. From the September 1926 issue of the British publication Melody Maker:
One popular “gig” band makes use of a nicely printed booklet.
And from the same magazine of May 1927:
This seven-piece combination does many “gigs” in S.E. London, but is hoping to secure a resident engagement at Leamington in the near future.
And by the mid twentieth century, the show business sense had expanded to include other types of precarious and intermittent employment. From Herbert Simmon’s 1957 novel Corner Boy:
You know I wouldn’t go against you, Monk. I ain’t trying to cut out. Why should I? Ain’t no other gig in town I can make this kind of bread.
And of course, this use of gig has lent itself to our economy in late-stage capitalism. From a CNN panel show of 14 January 2009, editor and journalist Tina Brown speaking:
As I say, you know people don't have jobs anymore, they just have gigs. They say, you ask somebody what they're doing and it takes about 10 minutes to answer. People go well I'm doing two hours here and I'm working there and I'm spending a few days consulting and I'm traveling and I'm doing this. And it's everybody's hustling. This is of course not news to people who, you know, in the lower income bracket but what is new and what really is quite striking right now is that the college-educated group who kind of thought that a college education was going to be a free pass to job security, are also completely scrambling in the new gig economy.
There you have it, a tortuous route through history that shows how different senses of a word can relate to and influence one another.
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