gout

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   An extremely painful inflammation of joints, especially of the big toe, caused by a metabolic defect resulting in the accumulation of uric acid in the blood and the deposition of urates around the joints.

   Once gout was confined largely to Western civilization (with some outliers, like the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan); now its ravages are global.

2. 2
   noun

   A drop; a spurt or splotch.

   Alternative forms: gut, gutt

3. 3
   verb

   To spurt.

   Dark blood gouts from the creature's brisket.

4. 4
   noun

   Alternative form of gote (“sluice, ditch, drain; vault”).

   ... Anton's Gout, let it be enlarged to whatever extent it may. The Sill of Anton's Gout is 2 feet 3 inches higher than the Sill of Maud Foster, and the surface of the water, in times when there is a full quantity in the Witham, and as[…]

5. 5
   noun

   Taste; relish.

   After a time, however, he became more sensible of the reviving influence proceeding from renewed energy; luxurious indolence had for ever lost to him its goût;[…]

6. 6
   noun

   a painful inflammation of the big toe and foot caused by defects in uric acid metabolism resulting in deposits of the acid and its salts in the blood and joints

7. 7
   noun

   A disease of wheat and cornstalks, caused by insect larvae.

Etymology

From Middle English goute, from Old French gote, gute, from Latin gutta (“drop”). Compare Spanish gota (“drop, droplet”). Doublet of goutte and gutta. The sense shift derived from humorism and "the notion of the 'dropping' of a morbid material from the blood in and around the joints".