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Gary

proper nounnouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈɡæɹ.ɪ//
  • //ˈɡæɹ.i//
  • //ˈɡɛɹ.i//
  • //ˈɡeɹ.i//

A male given name from the Germanic languages, popular from the 1940s to the 1970s; variant form Garry.

proper noun

  1. 1

    A male given name from the Germanic languages, popular from the 1940s to the 1970s; variant form Garry.

    Dressed up like a million dollar trooper / Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper

    "Gary's an awful name. Whatever he's like. It reminds me of a G.I. man with a crew cut, and 'Mom' tattooed on his chest, and lots of pin-up pictures on his wall."

    Call it a brain freeze, another “Aleppo moment,” or a mere campaign stumble, but Gary Johnson has stumbled again in his quixotic presidential campaign.

  2. 2

    A surname from Middle English [in turn originating as a patronymic]; variant form Garry.

  3. 3

    Numerous places in the United States: A city in Lake County, Indiana, named after American judge and businessman Elbert Henry Gary.

    Gary, Indiana! ¶ What a wonderful name ¶ Named for Elbert Gary of judiciary fame ¶ Gary, Indiana, as a Shakespeare would say ¶ Trips along softly on the tongue this way--

  4. 4

    Numerous places in the United States: A neighbourhood of Tampa, Florida.

  5. 5

    Numerous places in the United States: An unincorporated community in Howard County, Maryland.

  6. 6

    Numerous places in the United States: A minor city in Norman County, Minnesota, named after Garrett L. Thorpe.

  7. 7

    Numerous places in the United States: A city in Deuel County, South Dakota.

  8. 8

    Numerous places in the United States: A minor city in McDowell County, West Virginia, named after American judge and businessman Elbert Henry Gary.

  9. 9

    Variant of Gary CityNumerous places in the United States: Ellipsis of Gary City: a town in Panola County, Texas, United States.

Etymology

Medieval short form of Germanic compound names beginning with gari or geri ("spear"), such as Gerard, Garrett, Gerald, or Gerbert. Cognate with the Scottish and Irish name Garaidh. Sometimes also a short form of Gareth. The popularity of the given name in the 20th century is due to the American actor Gary Cooper, whose stage name was invented by his agent, a native of Gary, Indiana.

noun

  1. 1

    Synonym of Gary Glitter (“anus”).

    He did him up the Gary, he did.

Etymology

Ellipsis of Gary Glitter.

Forms

plural
Garys
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).