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Gamp (Mrs.)

,

or Sarah Gamp (g hard). A monthly nurse, famous for her bulky umbrella and perpetual reference to Mrs. Harris, a purely imaginary person, whose opinions always confirmed her own. (Dickens: Martin Chuzzlewit.)

“Mrs. Harris, I says to her, if I could afford to lay out all my fellow creeturs for nothink, I would gladly do it. Such is the love I bear ʹem.”

Punch caricatures the Standard as “Mrs. Sarah Gamp,” a little woman with an enormous bonnet and her characteristic umbrella.

A Sarah Gamp, or Mrs. Gamp. A big, pawky umbrella, so called from Sarah Gamp. (See above.)

In France it is called un Robinson, from Robinson Crusoe’s umbrella. (Defoe.)

 

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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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Game
Game-leg
Game for a Spree
Game is not worth the Candle (The)
Game’s Afoot (The)
Gamelyn
Gammer (g hard)
Gammer Gurton’s Needle
Gammon (g hard)
Gammut, or Gamut (g hard)
Gamp (Mrs.)
Gamps and Harrises
Ganabim
Gander (g hard)
Gander-cleugh
Gander-month
Ganelon (g hard)
Ganem (g hard)
Ganesa (g hard)
Gang a-gley (To)
Gang-board, or Gang-way (g hard)

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Gamps and Harrises