The
word gam popped up the other day in
reference to the late actress Betty Grable, who once insured her
“million-dollar gams” for $500,000
each. Shortly afterwards I noticed a report about an ocean-going ship that was
following a gam of whales. It turns out that gam has two different origins, depending on its meaning.
A gam might mean a “school of whales,” and
probably derives from a Scandinavian word for “game,” emphasizing the social
and sportive nature of a gathering of these sea-going mammals.
Grable’s
gams, on the other hand, are rooted
in Polari, a British jargon used by
actors, circus-performers, and, most notably, the gay community beginning in
the eighteenth century. A gam derives from the Italian gamba or “leg.” Polari has many varied linguistic
sources: Italian, Romany (or Gypsy), Yiddish, cockney rhyming slang, East End
canal-speak, back-formations of words, Shelta (the cant of Irish tinkers),
circus slang, and theatrical argot.
Polari,
sometimes palare or palyaree, which derives from Italian parlare (“talk”), was popularized on a
1960s BBC radio program that featured two screamingly camp characters, Julian
and Sandy, shamelessly overplayed by Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick. One of their Polari catch-phrases was
“How bona to vada your eek!”--which meant “How good to see your face!”
Other
words in the Polari vocabulary, some of which are now in mainstream English,
include camp (“exaggerated effeminate
mannerisms”), naff (“bad”), butch (“notably masculine”), fantabulosa
(“wonderful”), scarper (“run away”), bonaroo (“excellent”), barney (“fight”), drag (“clothes, especially those of the opposite sex”), and oglefakes (“eyeglasses”).
Some
people say the Bard of Buffalo Bayou was raised by a gam of whales, which is
where he got all his blubber. His
work lends validity to this hypothesis.
The
glamorously gammed Betty Grable,
Swathed
in mink and in ermine and sable,
In
a Cadillac car
That was fit for a star,
Lived
the high life till she was unable.
Today,
just like Hayworth or Gable,
Her story’s no longer a fable,
And
her public now views
Her
films after the news
That’s
aired at eleven on cable.