Gigged

So many meanings, all rejected by the Spelling Bee

Today’s New York Times Spelling Bee letters:

D, E, F, G, T, Y, and center I (all words must include I)

Merriam-Webster says…

Silly little dictionary! Don’t you know gigged can’t possibly be a word if the New York Times says it ain’t?

For further fascinating facts, check out the Spelling Bee Master.

What’s your favorite dord* from today’s puzzle?

My Two Cents

There are certain words that bring about immediate and specific associations. Gig is one of those words. It always makes me think of two things: (1) my seven-month stint as a bartender at Mixed Notes Café in Elmont, New York (very close to the Belmont racetrack) where jazz players went to jam on weeknights, and (2) Tim Price, multi-instrument player extraordinaire, a gentleman and a scholar… and my saxophone teacher since 2002.

The photos at the top of today’s column were taken when he was playing a gig in Roberto’s Winds in New York City. But I also remember going to see him at a few other places where he gigged, including the now-defunct Garage Restaurant & Cafe.

To gig

Yeah, I know that screenshot of Merriam-Webster’s entry of gigged isn’t very helpful; you had probably figured out on your own that gigged is the past tense of gig. I was just trying to make a point that the word as it could appear in today’s Spelling Bee answer list (if it hadn’t been rejected) exists in that past tense form in the dictionary itself.

Here is the list of entries for gig the verb:

That’s just the verbs, or “action words” as grade-school teachers call them. There are also five gig nouns for a total of nine entries provided by our friends at Merriam-Webster. Entry 7 is the one I was talking about before; music- related, yes, but also associated with any other type of engagement or job:

But gig the noun cannot be accepted in the Spelling Bee because one of the two basic rules is that each word must have at least four letters (the other rule being that the center letter must always appear). And although gig qualifies for the latter as it includes an “i”, alas it has only three letters.

Since gigged can qualify, we will concentrate on its verb entries. First up is…

The gigging machine uses teasels to produce a nap on cloth. Teasels are tall, herbaceous, biennial, flowering plant of the Caprifoliaceae family. But that’s not very helpful, so here is a photo of their seedheads.

And the machine that uses the above to tease the fabric and raise the nap looks like this:

Next comes…

Ah, yes. This one is easy. Just picture any movie in which people get shipwrecked on a desert island. Inevitably you will see a scene in which one of the characters attempts to snag some fresh whole sashimi by awkwardly throwing a home-made pointy stick at it:

Now, the reason Tom Hanks failed to catch fish and got a weird five-legged critter instead is because he did not use a fishgig, which is pronged. This guy did, however, and was much more successful:

Now, the third gig verb in the batting order is…

The above is based on the noun gig meaning “demerit” in military-speak. I couldn’t find out a lot about that, but says gogforce explains this:

“For those non-military types who might not be familiar, the term “gig line” refers to the line that extends from the military uniform shirt, to the edge of the belt buckle to the flap of the pant zipper. Military uniform standards call for a perfectly aligned line along these clothing items. If there is any deviation, this results in a “gig” or demerit of sorts.”

That makes me think of the movie An Officer and a Gentleman and the scene in which Foley discovers Mayo’s scheme to sell polished buckles to the other soldiers. Mayo gets a lot more than demerits for that.

And finally, we come full circle to:

Interestingly, Merriam-Webster cannot provide the exact etymology for the above meaning of gig. The web site etymonline.com, however, does explain that is may have been used “originally in the argot of jazz musicians, attested from 1915 but said to have been in use c. 1905; of uncertain origin. As a verb, by 1939. Among the earlier meanings of gig was “combination of numbers in betting games” (1847). Gig-economy is attested from 2009.”

Smooth jazzman

If there’s one thing I can say about my sax studies is that I am living proof of that famous saying: “The saxophone is the easiest instrument to play badly.”

Tim Price, on the other hand, is on the complete opposite end of that spectrum. Although you may not have heard of his name before, he is well known by industry insiders as a talented pro. You could call him a “musician’s musician”, or a “jazz player’s jazz player”. And he was always a laid-back, extremely patient teacher with me.

Tim plays not only the saxophone, but also the piano, the flute, the clarinet, the oboe, and the bassoon. He even used to make his own reeds for the bassoon!

Here is the performance he gave at Roberto’s Winds, with Kazzrie Jaxen on piano, in December of 2015. That’s the one I attended, and from which the photos at the very beginning of the article came from.

If you’re interested in learning more about Tim, check out his youtube channel.

October 2, 2023 Update: Tim passed away on July 21, 2022, seven months after this piece was published. He was a great teacher and a great friend, and you don’t get either of those often in life. This article, and it’s “Sweet Stink of Success” follow-up, are dedicated to his memory. Tim, you’ll be happy to know that, more than a year later, the Spelling Bee game decided to include gigged as a valid answer. Hurray!

What can I say except that, despite all the varied and interesting meanings of the verb gig… the editors of the Spelling Bee decided that the word gigged is a dord*.

You can check out my previous entry on another dord* here:

*What the heck is a dord, you ask? Here’s the answer: