Today’s letter stands for grits (yummy with butter and pepper – haven’t tried them with red-eye gravy yet), guns, gentlemen, Gollum and gargoyle.  Let us begin.

Galactophagist – one who drinks milk.  I didn’t know there was a word for that…I love the stuff.

Image: aopsan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Garret – attic room, commonly occupied by starving artists/writers/poets in romantic literature.

Genre – type of literature, such as romance, mystery, paranormal, sci-fi, etc.  Can be combined with others to create subgenres.  Example – paranormal romance like Twilight or a historical mystery like The Name of the Rose.  The short-lived TV program Firefly is a space western, with strong elements of each.

Gelato – Italian version of ice cream with less butterfat than the American kind.  While ice cream is whipped with air, gelato is not, making it melt faster in the mouth for a burst of immediate, rich, delicious flavor.

Ghawazi – tribe of Egyptian dancers, whose style is thought to be the origin of modern belly dancing.  Fascinating article here by orientalist Edwina Nearing.

Ghostwriter – a writer hired to write a book for somebody else.  Celebrity books are often written by ghostwriters, and then sold under the celebrity’s name.  You didn’t think they did their own writing, did you?

Gibbet – an old word for gallows.  Scooby and the gang freed the heroine from the noose just seconds before the monster sprung the gibbet’s trapdoor.  “Jinkies!” Velma exclaimed. “He nearly hanged you!”

Gimlet – small tool for boring holes; also a drink made with gin or vodka and lime juice.

Glaucous – light bluish-green.  I heard Richard Dreyfuss use this word in Jaws and I always wondered what it meant, but I never looked it up.  Bad writer! Bad!

Glossary – list of terms and definitions, often found at the back of a textbook.

Gormless – unintelligent.  Batman wondered how Robin could be so gormless as to let Joker capture him.  Perhaps his hot chocolate had been drugged.  Could that rather hirsute waitress have been one of Joker’s henchmen in a dress?

Goalmouth – the area between goalposts.

Gravid – pregnant.   Willow didn’t want to tell Buffy she was gravid with a mutant demon baby. Fooling around with Spike while hypnotized was embarrassing enough.

Groundlings – the Elizabethan commoners who paid a penny to stand in the yard (central open area) at the Globe Theater and watch Shakespeare’s plays.

Guile – crafty deception, wiles.

Guignol (grand guignol) – shocking or horrifying entertainment; over-the-top.  From Theatre du Grand Guignol in Paris, a bastion of in-your-face theater from its opening in 1897 until it closed in 1962.

Gwynedd – a county in Wales.

Gynotikolobomassophile – someone who enjoys nibbling on women’s earlobes. I swear this vocabulary search gets weirder every time.

Gyre – circular motion.  Those slithy toves who gyred and gimbled in the wabe in Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky must have been pretty dizzy.  Gimble means to make holes as with a gimlet.

That’s all for G.  Good night kids!