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''gallant'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260125123911-00-⌔

gallant - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

gallant (comparative more gallant, superlative most gallant)

  • Brave, valiant, courteous, especially with regard to male attitudes towards women.
    • ✤ That gallant spirit hath aspired the clouds.1
    • ✤ It is plain that the great majority of school children must be regarded, from the physical standpoint, as decidedly gallant little persons, who have wrestled through their infancy and have managed to come out of tribulations that have killed a large proportion of all the children of their birth-years.2
  • Honorable.
    • ✤ Captain Edward Carlisle […] felt a curious sensation of helplessness seize upon him as he met her steady gaze, […]; he could not tell what this prisoner might do. He cursed the fate which had assigned such a duty, cursed especially that fate which forced a gallant soldier to meet so superb a woman as this under handicap so hard.3
  • Grand, noble.
  • (obsolete) Showy; splendid; magnificent; gay; well-dressed.
    • ✤ This town is built in a very gallant place.4
    • ✤ our royal, good and gallant ship5

Adjective

gallant (comparative more gallant, superlative most gallant)

  • Polite and attentive to ladies; courteous to women; chivalrous.
    • ✤ I admire all that quaint, old-fashioned politeness; it is much more to my taste than modern ease; modern ease often disgusts me. But this good old Mr. Woodhouse, I wish you had heard his gallant speeches to me at dinner. Oh! I assure you I began to think my caro sposo would be absolutely jealous.6

Noun

gallant (plural gallants)

  • (dated) A fashionable young man who is polite and attentive to women.
    • ✤ Synonyms: blade, blood, masher; see also Thesaurus: dandy
    • ✤ PROSPERO: […] this gallant which thou see’st/Was in the wrack; and but he’s something stain’d/with grief,—that beauty’s canker,—thou mightst call him/A goodly person […]7
  • One who woos, a lover, a suitor, a seducer.
    • ✤ Synonyms: see Thesaurus: libertine
    • ✤ […] they were discovered in a very improper manner by the husband of the gypsy, who, from jealousy it seems, had kept a watchful eye over his wife, and had dogged her to the place, where he found her in the arms of her gallant.8
    • ✤ The ignominy of that whisper’d tale/About a midnight gallant, seen to climb/A window to her chamber neighbour’d near,/I will from her turn off, and put the load/On the right shoulders; on that wretch’s head, […]9
  • (nautical) A topgallant.

Verb

gallant (third-person singular simple present gallants, present participle gallanting, simple past and past participle gallanted)

  • (obsolete, transitive) To attend or wait on (a lady).
    • ✤ to gallant ladies to the play
    • ✤ During this period, we were the lions of the neighbourhood; and, no doubt, strangers from the distant villages were taken to see the “Karhowrees” (white men), in the same way that countrymen, in a city, are gallanted to the Zoological Gardens.10
  • (obsolete, transitive) To handle with grace or in a modish manner.
    • ✤ to gallant a fan
  • (transitive) To conduct, escort, convey.
    • ✤ … and the canoes of Vivenza, locking their yard-arms into those of the vanquished, very courteously gallanted them into their coral harbors.11
  • To behave in a gallant fashion; to act the gallant.
    • ✤ How different is the young, fun-loving, comical, quizzing, gallanting Captain Arthur Wellesley, when residing in his shooting lodge between Summerhill and Dangan, from the stern, cautious, careworn Fabius of the Peninsular war[.]12

Etymology 1

From Middle English galant, galaunt, from Old French galant (“courteous; dashing; brave”), present participle of galer (“to rejoice; make merry”), from gale (“pomp; show; festivity; mirth”); either from Frankish ﹡wala (“good, well”), a variant form of ﹡wela, from Proto-Germanic ﹡wela (whence well), from Proto-Indo-European ﹡welh₁- (“to choose, wish”); or alternatively from Frankish ﹡gail (“merry; mirthful; proud; luxuriant”), from Proto-Germanic ﹡gailaz (“merry; excited; luxurious”), related to Dutch geil (“horny; lascivious; salacious; lecherous”), German geil (“randy; horny; lecherous; wicked”), Old English gāl (“wanton; wicked; bad”).

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈɡælənt/
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -ælənt

Etymology 2

17th-century borrowing from French galant.13 See above.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ɡəˈlænt/, /ˈɡælənt/
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • (US) IPA: /ɡəˈlɑnt/, /ˈɡælənt/
  • Rhymes: -ænt

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]: ↩

  2. 1907, Margaret McMillan, Labour and Childhood, page 7: ↩

  3. 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC: ↩

  4. 1644 March 28 (Gregorian calendar), John Evelyn, “[Diary entry for 18 March 1644]”, in William Bray, editor, Memoirs, Illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Evelyn, […], 2nd edition, volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […]; and sold by John and Arthur Arch, […], published 1819, →OCLC: ↩

  5. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]: ↩

  6. 1815, Jane Austen, Emma, volume II, chapter 17: ↩

  7. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]: ↩

  8. 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume, London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC: ↩

  9. a. 1822 (date written), John Keats, “[Tragedies.] Otho the Great: A Tragedy in Five Acts.”, in [Horace Elisha Scudder], editor, The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats, Cambridge edition, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], published 1899, →OCLC, Act III, scene ii, page 176, column 2, lines 140–144: ↩

  10. 1847 March 30, Herman Melville, Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas; […], London: John Murray, […], →OCLC: ↩

  11. 1849, Herman Melville, Mardi: And a Voyage Thither. […], volume II, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC: ↩

  12. 1840 February 7, The Sydney Herald, page 2, column 5: ↩

  13. “gallant”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000. ↩

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Secondary

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