gag

The verb is from 15th-century Middle English gaggen, Early Modern English gagge, possibly imitative or perhaps related to or influenced by Old Norse (Old Icelandic) gag-háls ("with head thrown backwards"; > Norwegian dialectal gaga (“bent backwards”)). The intransitive sense "to retch" is from 1707.

The noun is from the 16th century, figurative use (for "repression of speech") from the 1620s. The secondary meaning "(practical) joke" is from 1863, of unclear origin.

• IPA^(key): /ɡæɡ/
• Rhymes: -æɡ

gag (plural gags)

1. A device to restrain speech, such as a rag in the mouth secured with tape or a rubber ball threaded onto a cord or strap.
2. (law) An order or rule forbidding discussion of a case or subject.
3. A joke or other mischievous prank.
   • 2012 May 20, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “Marge Gets A Job” (season 4, episode 7; originally aired 11/05/1992)”, in The Onion AV Club‎:

     We all know how genius “Kamp Krusty,” “A Streetcar Named Marge,” “Homer The Heretic,” “Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie” and “Mr. Plow” are, but even the relatively unheralded episodes offer wall-to-wall laughs and some of the smartest, darkest, and weirdest gags ever Trojan-horsed into a network cartoon with a massive family audience.

4. (film) a device or trick used to create a practical effect; a gimmick
   • 2016 November 3, Ian Failes, “How the King of Practical Effects Conquered ‘Hacksaw Ridge’”, in Inverse‎:

     On Hacksaw Ridge, Oliver and his team of effects artisans devised gags for that spectacular flamethrower shot along with other devastating body and bullet hits, and several mortar and full-scale explosions, all aimed at communicating the reality of battle.

5. A convulsion of the upper digestive tract.
6. (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) (archaic) A mouthful that makes one retch or choke.
   • 2008, Charles Lamb, ‎Percy Fitzgerald, The Life, Letters, and Writings of Charles Lamb - Volume 3, page 153:

     L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to gags, or the fat of fresh beef boiled, and sets it down to some superstition.

   • 2013, Kathleen Cioffi, Alternative Theatre in Poland, page 123:

     ...and to take that fire behind the bony bars of the chest and into the tower of the windpipe, in one breath, before you choke on a gag of air thickened from the last breath of the executed the breathing of hot barrels and blood streaming on concrete,...

   • 2014, Anil Aggrawal, APC Essentials of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, page 298:

     Blood may seep to the back of the throat and may clot, producing an “artificial gag” of clotted blood.

7. Mycteroperca microlepis, a species of grouper.

   Synonym: gag grouper

   • 1996, C.C. Koenig, “Reproduction in Gag (Mycteroperca microlepis) (Pisces: Serranidae) in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Consequences of Fishing Spawning Aggregations”, in Biology, Fisheries, and Culture of Tropical Groupers and Snappers:

     The shallow water groups (Family Serranidae), including gag (Mycteroperca microlepis), black grouper (M. bonaci), scamp (M. phenax), and red grouper (Epinephalus morio), support major commercial and recreational fisheries in the southeastern United States.

• (legal): gag order
• (joke): See also Thesaurus:joke

• sight gag

gag (third-person singular simple present gags, present participle gagging, simple past and past participle gagged)

1. (intransitive) To experience the vomiting reflex.

   He gagged when he saw the open wound.

2. (transitive) To cause to heave with nausea.
   • Stephen King, A Very Tight Place

     His empty stomach was suddenly full of butterflies, and for the first time since arriving here at scenic Durkin Grove Village, he felt an urge to gag himself. He would be able to think more clearly about this if he just stuck his fingers down his throat […]

3. (transitive) To restrain someone's speech by blocking his or her mouth.
   • 1905, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, chapter 1, in The Fate of the Artemis‎:

     “ […] Captain Markam had been found lying half-insensible, gagged and bound, on the floor of the sitting-room, his hands and feet tightly pinioned, and a woollen comforter wound closely round his mouth and neck ; whilst Mrs. Markham's jewel-case, containing valuable jewellery and the secret plans of Port Arthur, had disappeared. […] ”

   • 1906, Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman:

     They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,

     But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;

     Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!

4. (transitive) To pry or hold open by means of a gag.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Sir John Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Angliae (translated by Francis Gregor)

     […] some have their mouths gagged to such a wideness, for a long time, whereat such quantities of water are poured in, that their bellies swell to a prodigious degree […]

5. (transitive, figuratively) To restrain someone's speech without using physical means.

   When the financial irregularities were discovered, the CEO gagged everyone in the accounting department.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Macaulay

     The time was not yet come when eloquence was to be gagged, and reason to be hoodwinked.

6. (transitive, intransitive) To choke; to retch.

• gag me with a spoon

• gag in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

• gag at OneLook Dictionary Search

gag m (plural gags)

1. jay

gag m (plural gags)

1. gag (joke)

• (Standard Zhuang) IPA^(key): /kaːk˧/
• Tone numbers: gag⁸
• Hyphenation: gag

gag (old orthography gag, Sawndip forms 各, 架, 格)

1. by oneself; alone

   Synonym: haek (dialectal)

2. on one's own; by oneself; without permission

   Synonym: gujgag (dialectal)

3. just; only

gag (old orthography gag)

1. to eject; to cough up

   Synonym: gak (dialectal)