one of my favorite words

welcome to my new blog! if you’re looking for tales of adventure from my recent trip to india, check out sjwinindia.blogspot.com. this new blog will be the new home of random thoughts, interesting news, and things i’m studying/thinking about. for now, one of my favorite words:

gam: As described in an 1890 article on whaling, “To gam means to gossip. The word occurs again and again in the log-books of the old whalers. The uninitiated might suppose it signified merely spinning yarns on the fo’castle. But to the old whaleman it has a far deeper meaning. When the whalemen met on the high seas thousands of miles from home they would lay to, sometimes for hours, captain and crew would exchange visits, letters from and for home to be delivered, and the story of the voyages told. That was a ‘gam.’” — Gustav Kobbe, “The Perils and Romance of Whaling,” The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine.