wound gall

1 definition found

wound gall - Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :

  Wound \Wound\ (?; 277), n. [OE. wounde, wunde, AS. wund; akin to
     OFries. wunde, OS. wunda, D. wonde, OHG. wunta, G. wunde,
     Icel. und, and to AS., OS., & G. wund sore, wounded, OHG.
     wunt, Goth. wunds, and perhaps also to Goth. winnan to
     suffer, E. win. [root]140. Cf. Zounds.]
     [1913 Webster]
     1. A hurt or injury caused by violence; specifically, a
        breach of the skin and flesh of an animal, or in the
        substance of any creature or living thing; a cut, stab,
        rent, or the like. --Chaucer.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              Showers of blood
              Rained from the wounds of slaughtered Englishmen.
                                                    --Shak.
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     2. Fig.: An injury, hurt, damage, detriment, or the like, to
        feeling, faculty, reputation, etc.
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     3. (Criminal Law) An injury to the person by which the skin
        is divided, or its continuity broken; a lesion of the
        body, involving some solution of continuity.
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     Note: Walker condemns the pronunciation woond as a
           "capricious novelty." It is certainly opposed to an
           important principle of our language, namely, that the
           Old English long sound written ou, and pronounced like
           French ou or modern English oo, has regularly changed,
           when accented, into the diphthongal sound usually
           written with the same letters ou in modern English, as
           in ground, hound, round, sound. The use of ou in Old
           English to represent the sound of modern English oo was
           borrowed from the French, and replaced the older and
           Anglo-Saxon spelling with u. It makes no difference
           whether the word was taken from the French or not,
           provided it is old enough in English to have suffered
           this change to what is now the common sound of ou; but
           words taken from the French at a later time, or
           influenced by French, may have the French sound.
           [1913 Webster]
  
     Wound gall (Zool.), an elongated swollen or tuberous gall
        on the branches of the grapevine, caused by a small
        reddish brown weevil (Ampeloglypter sesostris) whose
        larvae inhabit the galls.
        [1913 Webster]