Gall

A digression arising from an excursion into pigs and acorns, which led to tannin and oak gall. Tannin led to the digestion of pigs, then to that of mammals in general and so to the gall bladder.

I thought that all that galls of plants and gall aka bile of animals had in common was a bitter taste. Maybe the size and shape of the gallbladder? 

I then thought to ask Gemini and he provided something which read pretty well, snapped above, in far less time than it would have taken me to dig around. Two quite different words.

By way of checking, I thought I would try OED.

Where I find that while ‘G’ is not a big letter, ‘gall’ is a big fish in a small pool, getting thirteen pages spread over fourteen and with gall itself getting near two pages or five columns. Three nominal meanings and two verbal meanings, the second of which only rates eight lines.

Nominal meanings. First, gall as in bladder. From an old word for yellow. Second, gall as in sore on a horse; probably more current when horses were more current. From an old word for pimple, blister or flaw. Third, gall as a complicated sore on an oak tree. From an old word for oak apple. Seemingly all old words, with very different derivations.

Verbal meanings. First, to make sore by rubbing, to irritate, harrass or annoy. Second, a dyeing term for impregnating cloth with (oak) gall.

While Wikipedia reminds me that bile, aka gall, accounted for two of the four humors of old. The sort of thing that Shakespeare no doubt wrote about. Known to Hippocrates two and a half thousand years ago.

I went on to ask Gemini whether the bitterness of animal bile had anything in common with the bitterness of vegetable gall. The answer seems to be no: the former is caused by a steroid and the latter by a polyphenol. They both taste bitter to us, presumably as a broad-brush warning signal to have a care. A signal that an evolutionarily young human could deal with.

A good effort on Gemini’s part. I am not minded to check any further and he has saved me a lot of time.

PS: all this aside, the main business of the day was moving nine barrowloads of leaves and acorns from the back lawn onto the big compost heap before the promised rain makes them more difficult to deal with.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannin. 

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall. Rich in tannins. Once important for ink, for dye and for tanning leather.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallbladder. 

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile.  

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