galliard

English

Alternative forms

gaillard

Noun

galliard (countable and uncountable, plural galliards)

A lively dance, popular in 16th- and 17th-century Europe.
(music) The triple-time music for this dance.
(dated) A brisk, merry person.
- 1647, John Cleveland, “The Mixt Assembly”, in The character of a London-diurnall with severall select poems, page 36 1647, keyboarded 1687, scanned:
  Thus every Gibelline hath got his Guelf ;
  But Selden he's a Galliard by himself ;
  And well may be ; there's more Divines in him ,
  Than in all this their Jewish Sanhedrim ;
- 1828, Sir Walter Scott, The Fair Maid of Perth‎:
  I will be answerable that this galliard meant but some St. Valentine's jest.
- 1953, Saul Bellow, chapter 5, in The Adventures of Augie March, New York: Viking Press, OCLC 279587:
  He was still an old galliard, with white Buffalo Bill vandyke, and he swanked around, still healthy of flesh, in white suits, looking things over with big sex-amused eyes.
(uncountable, Continental printing, dated) An intermediate size of type alternatively equated with brevier (by Didot points) or bourgeois (by Fournier points and by size).

Translations

8-point type — see brevier

9-point type — see bourgeois

Adjective

galliard (comparative more galliard, superlative most galliard)

(dated) Gay; brisk; active.