gammy
/ˈɡæmi/
gammy adjective: injured, or not functioning properly (with respect to legs).
Adjective
gammy (comparative gammier, superlative gammiest)
- Injured, or not functioning properly (with respect to legs).
- I have got a gammy leg, and can't walk far.
- However, I had been doing a lot of walking and my gammy leg began to give me trouble.1933, Frank Clune, Try Anything Once, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 131
- Synonyms:
- lame
- Fake; counterfeit.
- A little bit of real lace would be fixed on this as in process of making, and a lot of "gammy" stuff, imitation lace, would be carried with it.1891, The Gentleman's Magazine, volume 270, page 389
- Bad; unfavourable.
Noun
gammy (plural gammies)
- Grandmother.
- Had our beloved gammy lost it?
Examples of gammy in a sentence
- "With that gammy leg I wouldn't risk a bet against the chance of another accident on those stairs."1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 165:
- I'm not exactly spectacular at the moment with a gammy knee that sometimes lets me down and hair that looks as if it's been cut with a knife and fork.2009, Abigail Gordon, A Summer Wedding at Willowmere, page 31:
Synonyms of gammy
Forms of gammy
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | gammier |
| superlative | gammiest |
| alternative form | gammie |
| Noun | |
| plural | gammies |
Origin of gammy
Origin obscure and uncertain. Possibly from the English dialectal (North Midlands) adjective game (“lame”), Welsh cam (“crooked”), or from Irish cam (“bent”), by way of Shelta. Compare also Old Occitan gambi (“lame, limping”), related to Old Occitan gamba (“leg”) (see also French jambe (“leg”), English gam (“leg”)).
Abbreviation + -y.
Words that rhyme with gammy
Questions about gammy
- What does gammy mean?
- Gammy means injured, or not functioning properly (with respect to legs).
- How do you use gammy in a sentence?
- "With that gammy leg I wouldn't risk a bet against the chance of another accident on those stairs."
- What part of speech is gammy?
- Gammy can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce gammy?
- Gammy is pronounced /ˈɡæmi/.
Words near gammy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: gammy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-gammy.ogg.
Cite this entry: “gammy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gammy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.