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1719 entries found
gu- 
because g- followed by some vowels in English usually has a "soft" pronunciation, a silent -u- sometimes was inserted between the g- and the vowel in Middle English to signal hardness, especially in words from French; but this was not done with many Scandinavian words where hard "g" precedes a vowel (gear, get, give, etc.). Germanic -w- generally became -gu- in words borrowed into Romance languages, but Old North French preserved the Frankish -w-, and English sometimes borrowed both forms, hence guarantee/warranty, guard/ward, etc.
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gymno- 
before vowels gymn-, word-forming element meaning "naked, stripped, bare," from Greek gymnos "naked, unclad; bare, mere," from a metathesis of PIE *nogw-mo-, suffixed form of *nogw- "naked" (see naked).
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gyneco- 

also gynaeco-, before a vowel gynec-, word-forming element meaning "woman, female," from Latinized form of Greek gynaiko-, combining form of gynē "woman, female," from PIE root *gwen- "woman." Also see æ (1).

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gyno- 
word-forming element especially in modern medical and botanical words equivalent to gyneco-.
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gyro- 
word-forming element meaning "gyrating" or "gyroscope," from Greek gyros "a ring, circle" (see gyre (n.)).
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g spot (n.)
also g-spot, 1981, short for Gräfenberg spot, named for German gynecologist Ernst Gräfenberg (1881-1957), who described it in 1950.
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G-man (n.)
"FBI agent," 1930, shortening of government man; used earlier in an Irish context (1917), but the abbreviation is perhaps the same one.
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G-string (n.)

1878, geestring, "loincloth worn by an American Indian," originally the string that holds it up, etymology unknown. The spelling with G (1882) is perhaps from influence of violin string tuned to a G (in this sense G string is first recorded 1831), the lowest and heaviest of the violin strings. First used of women's attire 1936, with reference to strip-teasers.

I AM the spirit of the silver "G":
I am silvered sadness,
I am moonlit gladness,
I am that fine madness
Of reverence half, and half of ecstasy
[from "Spirit of the 'G' String," Alfred L. Donaldson, in "Songs of My Violin," 1901]
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G.A.R. 
1867, abbreviation of Grand Army of the Republic, the organization founded by union veterans of the American Civil War. The Grand Army was the name given (on the French model) to the army that organized in Washington in 1861 to put down the rebellion.
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G.I. (adj.)
also GI, 1936 as an adjective meaning "U.S. Army equipment," American English, apparently an abbreviation of Government Issue, and applied to anything associated with servicemen. Transferred noun sense of "U.S. Army soldier" arose during World War II (first recorded 1943), apparently from the jocular notion that the men themselves were manufactured by the government.

An earlier G.I. (1908) was an abbreviation of galvanized iron, especially in G.I. can, a type of metal trash can; the term was picked up by U.S. soldiers in World War I as slang for a similar-looking type of German artillery shells. But it is highly unlikely that this G.I. came to mean "soldier." No two sources seem to agree on the entire etymology, but none backs the widespread notion that it stands for *General Infantry. GI Joe "any U.S. soldier" attested from 1942 (date in OED is a typo).
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