A man in Rupert, Vermont, says his wife affectionately calls him a big galooly. It’s unclear where that word might have come from, although it might derive from galoot. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Galooly, Galoot”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello there, this is Alan from Rupert, Vermont.
Alan, what’s on your mind? You got a language question for us?
Alan from Rupert.
I do. I’m a big six-foot-something kind of a guy, and quite often my wife will call me a big galooly.
And I’ve always considered it a term of endearment because she calls me other things when she’s mad at me.
But, you know, we got to wondering where that word came from.
So we went to the Internet, of course, and the Urban Dictionary came up with the husband of a certain Olympic figure skater.
Right.
Back in the late 80s, I think it was.
Yeah.
And meaning a term like to sabotage.
So that’s Tanya Harding’s husband at the time.
What was his name?
Jeff.
Jeff Galluli.
And they tried to hurt Nancy Kerrigan.
They did hurt Nancy Kerrigan.
It’s been a while since I read that story.
It’s a horrible story.
And we just weren’t satisfied with that.
No.
You know, it was something I know I’ve heard, you know, before that as a kid.
You did?
It’s something that my wife had heard her mother say.
Oh.
You know, Galooly doesn’t come up in any dictionary that I can check here.
It really doesn’t.
My best guess is it comes from the word galoot.
That’s what I was thinking.
Do you know Big Galoot?
Big Galoot.
Yeah, that’s far more common and widespread.
It’s an Americanism that even now has bled over a little bit into the United Kingdom.
But it’s a several hundred-year-old word that basically is exactly the same.
It’s kind of a—
Big, clumsy.
Awkward, yeah, kind of—
A big galoot.
Yeah.
Right.
Kind of shambling.
I mean, that’s the way I’ve always understood it.
When she says it, usually I’m doing something goofy or—
It’s about your size, right?
It’s about your stature.
Six-foot something.
It’s about your behavior, right, that you’re not nimble,
And maybe it also reflects on your lack of nimble mnemon.
I don’t know.
Right, right.
Galoot.
Yeah, and we don’t know the origin of galoot.
It’s unknown.
There’s some theories on it.
At least originally it meant a marine or a soldier,
And it’s possibly some similar terms in Dutch and some other Germanic languages.
Really?
So it doesn’t really have any, like, goofy, clumsy?
It sort of sounds like it.
I don’t see big galootly anywhere.
I see one you said of it on the Internet,
And I wouldn’t be surprised if it was your wife.
But I…
It’s from like 2011.
But it really is not out there at all.
And I tried nine different spellings.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, we were having the same problem.
But galoot.
Yeah, you got to do that like minus harding when you search for the term.
Yeah.
Yeah, big galoot.
Alan Doe, the cool thing about this show is with hundreds of thousands of listeners,
We’ve got a whole bunch of field workers who, if they’ve heard of it, they will tell us.
Yes, there’s a whole galoot contingent down there.
The galoot, the galoolies.
Ring us up and let us know.
Excellent.
Great.
And we’ll let you know if we hear, all right?
All right.
Thank you.
We’ll stay tuned.
Take care.
Bye-bye, Alan.
Thanks, guys.
Bye.
Talk to us.
It’s a show about more than word origins.
It’s a show about all of language.
