Moby-Dick; or, The Whale · Moby-Dick, ch. 53 · block 7

But what is a Gam? You might wear out your index-finger running up and down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word. Dr. Johnson never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster’s ark does not hold it. Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many years been in constant use among some fifteen thousand true born Yankees. Certainly it needs a definition, and should be incorporated into the Lexicon. With that view, let me learnedly define it.

Herman Melville · 1851
Project Gutenberg #15, credited to Eugene F. Irey; updated 10 June 2026. Based on the first American edition, Harper & Brothers, 1851, according to the source catalog.
Mapped print edition: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1851; First American edition).
Passage ¶1343: pp. 267–268 (Scanned p. 267 · Scanned p. 268)
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Gloss address: 53.7 · chapter.paragraph · global ¶1343
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