How to use gall in a sentence

31 example sentences · noun, verb

Gall means impudence or brazenness; temerity; chutzpah. Example: “Improper cooling and a dull milling cutter on titanium can gall the surface.”

Examples of gall by meaning

nounImpudence or brazenness; temerity; chutzpah.

Yer one o’ that gang o’ bums that come here last night, an’ now you got the gall to come back beggin’ for food, eh?1917, Edgar Rice Burroughs, chapter 6, in The Oakdale Affair
In July 1938, that was sufficient to call down contempt and hatred on us, and brand us as men of unmitigated gall.1944, Teheran: Our Path in War and Peace, page 55
It requires the cunning of a chess master, the planning of a field marshal, the adroitness and polish of a premier of France, or, failing these, the sheer, unmitigated gall of your door-to-door salesman.1962, How to live with a calculating cat, page 47

nounA sore on a horse caused by an ill-fitted or ill-adjusted saddle; a saddle sore.

Riding a horse with bruised or broken skin can cause a gall, which frequently results in the white saddle marks seen on the withers and backs of some horses.1989 National Ag Safety Database (Centers for Disease Control)

verbTo chafe, to rub or subject to friction; to create a sore on the skin.

Ah, here the sandal galled!1907, Edward Peple, Semiramis: A Tale of Battle and of Love
But his Roman collar galled him, his cossack stifled him, his biretta was as uncomfortable as a merry-andrew's cap and bells.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XV, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

verbTo harass, to harry, often with the intent to cause injury.

As Bactria had pressed upon Assyria's force below, so now Prince Menon galled the Bactrians from his vantage point above, destroying them with arrows and with slings, with down-flung stones and the trunks of fallen trees.1907, Edward Peple, Semiramis: A Tale of Battle and of Love

verbTo exasperate.

Metrinko was hungry, but he was galled by how self-congratulatory his captors seemed, how generous and noble and proudly Islamic.1979 December, Mark Bowden, “Captivity Pageant”, in The Atlantic, volume 296, number 5, pages 92–97

verbTo cause pitting on a surface being cut from the friction between the two surfaces exceeding the bond of the material...

Improper cooling and a dull milling cutter on titanium can gall the surface.

nounA blister or tumor-like growth found on the surface of plants, caused by various pathogens, especially the burrowing of...

Even so, Redi retained a belief that in certain other cases—the origin of parasites inside the human or animal body or of grubs inside of oak galls—there must be spontaneous generation.1974, Philip P. Wiener, editor, Dictionary of the History of Ideas

More sentences with gall

Running while low on oil had galled the babbitt.From the entry babbitt
These people now have the gall to take Harvey's name in vain.1979 August 11, John Kyper, “Gay Shame!”, in Gay Community News, volume 7, number 4, page 5. From the entry with friends like these, who needs enemies
If citizens hear overmuch of the bliss of others, it galls the secrecy of their hearts.1947, Pindar, “Pythia 1”, in Richmond Lattimore, transl., Odes, University of Chicago Press, page 46. From the entry overmuch
No, sir; there wasn't a milligramme of gall in old man Shakespeare's constitution.1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries. From the entry milligramme
But from the cup of the body she had drunk only the gall of the senses.1915, Amélie Rives, chapter 20, in Shadows of Flames, New York: Stokes, page 367. From the entry beglamourment
Gall possesses still one more silver cumdach, which is probably Irish.1909, The Library, page 369. From the entry cumdach
From the same lips the honied phrases fall That still are bitter from cascades of gall.1903, Ambrose Bierce, Shapes of Clay. From the entry honied
Giraffes, oddly, sometimes have gall bladders and sometimes donʼt.2019, Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Black Swan (2020), page 178. From the entry gall bladder
It would be in character if, unable to contain her suffering alone, she had vented her gall on her own husband.2012, Christopher Hauke, Luke Hockley, Jung and Film II: The Return. From the entry vent one's gall
At the end of gall formation isolated scleroids are differentiated in the gall parenchyma, and much more rarely, tracheids and vessels.1961, Doklady: Botanical sciences sections - Volumes 136-141, page 15. From the entry scleroid
Gastro-duodenal soundage revealed a normally functioning gall bladder .1949, American Journal of Tropical Medicine - Volume 29, Part 2, page 883. From the entry soundage
But his Roman collar galled him, his cossack stifled him, his biretta was as uncomfortable as a merry-andrew’s cap and bells.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXXIII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC…. From the entry work
But his Roman collar galled him, his cassock stifled him, his biretta was as uncomfortable as a merry-andrew's cap and bells.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XV, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC. From the entry safely
This gall was brought to me ten years ago.1910 June, E. W. Swanton, “Notes on British Galls”, in Knowledge: A Monthly Record of Science, volume 7, page 209. From the entry dipteron
Galls on tamboti branches are caused by the larvae of a wasp of the tanaostigmatid family, which bores into the wood to lay her eggs.1993, Braam Van Wyk, Bushveld Trees: Lifeblood of the Transvaal Lowveld, page 70. From the entry tanaostigmatid
They had been suckered in by a slick cardsharp once and had learned a lesson that still galled them whenever they were reminded of it.1989, Jean Haught, Prisoner of Passion (A Zebra Romance), London: Zebra Books, →ISBN, page 34. From the entry cardsharp
What is the difference to the tongue’s taste between drinking a full bodied Velletri wine and vinegar and gall, and how much does he drink in that mouth’s sipful?2013, Bernard Beatty, “The Bric-à-Brac Wars: Robert Browning and Blessed John Henry Newman”, in Jonathon Shears, Jen Harrison, editors…. From the entry sipful
"The Japanese lackeys of the so-called state of Manchukuo had the gall to protest, but General Secretary Stalin and Foreign Commissar Litvinov rejected their foolish babbling out of hand."2011, Harry Turtledove, The Big Switch, 1st edition, New York: Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 88. From the entry Tsitsihar
However, other phylloxerans can be seriously damaging to other woody plants, notably the grape phylloxera, Daktulosphaira vitifoliae (Fitch), that produces, alternately, leaf galls and root galls on grape vines.2008, “Shade Tree Arthropods and Their Management”, in John L. Capinera, editor, Encyclopedia of Entomology, volume 4, page 3363. From the entry phylloxeran
My medicines taste vilely, of cimiter, dogbane and gall: the body quickly returns to robust health so that it need assimilate no more of my foul concoctions!1983, Jack Vance, chapter 25, in Suldrun’s Garden, New York: Berkley. From the entry embrocation
Galls when found were inspected for inducers, collected separately in plastic bags when an insect or mite was found and were provisionally morphotyped (for organ, shape, colour and host plant).2014, Geraldo Wilson Fernandes, Neotropical Insect Galls, page 227. From the entry morphotype

Meaning of gall

noun Impudence or brazenness; temerity; chutzpah.
noun A gallbladder.
noun Bile, especially that of an animal; the greenish, profoundly bitter-tasting fluid found in bile ducts and gall bladders, structures associated with the liver.

Full definition of gall

Questions about gall in a sentence

How do you use gall in a sentence?: Gall is used as a noun and verb. For example: “Improper cooling and a dull milling cutter on titanium can gall the surface.”
What is a short sentence with gall?: “Ah, here the sandal galled!”
What does gall mean?: Gall means impudence or brazenness; temerity; chutzpah.

Adapted from Wiktionary: gall (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use gall in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/gall. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.