[Ads-l] New term for me "gig economy"

[Baker, John]

I suspect that this is from the OED's gig n.4, a kind of fish-spear, and the related gig v.5, to spear (fish) with a gig.  I assume it's unrelated to gig in the music/free-lance sense.

The gig I'm familiar with is not a fish gig, but a frog gig, used for hunting frogs whose hind legs will then be eaten.  Specifically, I'm familiar with long poles with small tridents at the end, of an appropriate size to spear frogs.  However, looking for "frog gig" on the Internet produces a variety of devices, although they are all for the same purpose.

I think it's easy to see how someone who receives a write-up from an inspector might use this sense of the word figuratively.


John Baker


From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> On Behalf Of Jesse Sheidlower
Sent: Friday, March 27, 2020 2:41 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: New term for me "gig economy"

HDAS has examples of this from 1930, labelled "Esp. _Army_," for both noun ("an instance of being placed on disciplinary report; demerit") and verb ("to place on disciplinary report; administer official punishment to").

Jesse Sheidlower

On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 06:30:13PM +0000, Bill Mullins wrote:
> While researching gig I found another sense that I don't see listed in the OED.
>
> To get "gigged" on an inspection is for the inspector to have found something that does not meet standards. The write-up from the inspector that results is a "gig". I suspect that people with a military background (Hi Wilson!) would be familiar with this.
>
>
> Honolulu HI _Star-Bulletin_ 29 Jul 1939, feature sec p 3 col 6 (newspapers.com)
> "You can get 'gigged' in civvy life if you come up short as well as in the army."
>
>
> Clinton MO _Henry County Democrat_ 17 May 1951 p 2 col 5
>
> [Headline] "Clinton GIs See Bright Weekends -- Barring Gigs"
> [article] "If they aren't gigged on Saturday inspections they'll be able to visit their Henry County homes each weekend while they're at Leonard Wood."
>
> Freeport IL _Journal-Standard_ 28 Jul 1954, p 13 col 3
> "We operated under a demerit or 'gig' system. Thirty gigs meant expulsion from camp. You could get gigged for anything."
>
>
> *
>
> > Is it the very common term "gig economy" that is being mentioned, or the even more
> > common transferred sense of "gig"? The earliest occurrences of "gig economy" in
> > LexisNexis are from 2009; the transferred sense of "gig" has an OED first use of 1964.
>
> > Fred Shapiro
>
>
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