GALLING • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Galling

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/gˈɔlɪŋ/ Listen

verb

Gall v. t. (Dyeing) To impregnate with a decoction of gallnuts.

Gall v. t. (past & past part. galled; pres. part. galling)

To fret and wear away by friction; to hurt or break the skin of by rubbing; to chafe; to injure the surface of by attrition; as, a saddle galls the back of a horse; to gall a mast or a cable. "I am loth to gall a new-healed wound."

To fret; to vex; as, to be galled by sarcasm. "They that are most galled with my folly, They most must laugh."

To injure; to harass; to annoy; as, the troops were galled by the shot of the enemy. "In our wars against the French of old, we used to gall them with our longbows, at a greater distance than they could shoot their arrows."

Gall v. i. To scoff; to jeer. (R.)

adjective

Galling adj. Fitted to gall or chafe; vexing; harassing; irritating.

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Etymology of 'Galling'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Galling" Quotes from Famous Books

... will have to administer will be no clearer than those we know to-day, and the body which is to regulate their administration no wiser than the British Parliament. So that upon all hands we may look for a form of servitude most galling to the blood—servitude to many and changing masters, and for all the slights that accompany the rule of jack-in-office. And if the Socialistic programme be carried out with the least fulness, we shall have lost a thing, in most respects ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... galling to the Oxford antiquaries of Queen Elizabeth's days to have to acknowledge that there was a Cambridge before there was an Oxford. Nevertheless the fact is so. Hide your diminished heads, ye rash ones who would fain have us ...

— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... lions—savage beasts that could climb trees and fall upon the defenseless; of our catamounts, deer, wolves, bears, foxes—all these we killed without molestation from anybody; I told him how all American sportsmen were like the Nimrods of old. How galling, then, for a true shootist to be misunderstood, decried, denounced, and arrested for so insignificant a beastie as a rabbit! This indignity my very dear friend, Herr Wilhelm Fuedels-Shimmer, had suffered—a most estimable young man—careless, perhaps, ...

— Fiddles - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... beside himself with rage and pain. Roaring till the blue-and-crimson bird on the tree-top flew off in a panic, he shook his head desperately, and then almost tried to stand upon it. He started to roll over on his back, hoping thus to dislodge the galling thing beneath the carapace, but thought better of it at the first added pressure. His contortions were so vehement that the man discreetly drew himself up to a higher branch, a slow grin widening his heavy mouth, as he marked his power to inflict injury on even ...

— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... these galling attacks and the impossibility of retaliating, at length they emerged into an open and level country. Here, overjoyed at being freed from this forest prison, they gave reins to their horses, and free vent to their smothered rage, and ...

— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

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