Past tense of 'gally'; frightened, startled, or became nervous or disturbed.
From Middle English 'galien' or 'gallen,' possibly from Old Norse origins. The word may relate to being made to 'gall' (irritate) or could derive from scared-animal behavior, with the meaning evolving to describe emotional disturbance.
This verb is mostly obsolete now, but it survives in dialects and reminds us that English has lost thousands of useful emotion-words—we once had specific terms for very particular kinds of being startled or annoyed that modern English doesn't preserve.
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