Posted by Magnus Smith on April 29, 2015 at 04:16:06 user Magnus.
In Reply to: Re: World Wide Words posted by Mike Field on April 29, 2015 at 00:08:59:
Google took me to an interesting web page I have linked to below. There is a mild Ransome connection as he also owned a "great Oxford English Dictionary" (OED), which includes the etymology of all words in the English language, whether out of use or current.
The OED features galoot (however, no example predates 1812), marks it as nautical, registers the spelling variants galloot and geeloot, and quotes several sentences from which it follows that the earlier references were to an awkward soldier and an inexperienced marine.
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