WHY DO WE SAY — ?

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 112, 15 May 1933, Page 6

WHY DO WE SAY — ?

"GIFT OF THE GAB." Here is another example of the relegation of a phrase from recognised ''King's English" to colloquialism. The "gab" was formerly a good English word, used by our forefathers in several ways; not in quite so many, however, as to-day. Cab was a variant for the Anglo-Saxon gob, the mouth or speech, while the same word was used in Scotland with, particularly, the former meaning. Gob continued to be used in English until the eighteenth century, and is still preserved in collie vulgar expressions. In 1095 an example of the early form of our modern "gift of the gab" is seen in a humorous "Book of Job," ascribed by Colvil to Zachary Boyd: — There was a man named Job Lived In tlio land of Ux, ITe had a good Rift of the gob, The same thing happen us. When gob became more common as gab, which had largely taken place by Norman times, it was also made into sueli forms as gabber or gabble, both with the meaning of talk or conversation, and we see these to-day in our language, the one in its old form, the other as jabber. To "have the gift of the gab" was soon applied to a person of outstanding ease of speech, whether in personal conversation or in public oratory. But before long it began to acquire some less pleasant secondary meanings. Among these were "to lie," with which implication "to gab" was already in use in the fourteenth century, and to talk idly or boastfully of one's achievements.

With the passage of centuries, gab was employed in even more expressions, and in recent times its use has spread to many common slang phrases, which are not so widely used or accepted as "the gift of the gab." For instance, there was "to blow -the gab," to inform, to sneak, or, as we say, "to peach," which is now "to blow the gaff." "To flash the gab" came to mean to boast in one's talk and "to stcek one's gab" is to "shut up"—-be silent.

Gab has been used by such stalwarts of literature as Scott and Burns, the latter of whom wrote in "The Jolly Beggars":—

An' aye he gies the towzie drab The tlther skelpin' kiss, While she hold up hor greedy gab Just like an aumous dish. The "gift of the gab" seems to have undergone v a slight change of meaning recently, but we should properly understand by it what J. W. Croker intended when he said in 1820: "A Government cannot go on without the gift of the gab."