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gem

Pronunciation: /d͡ʒɛm/

The English word “gem” has 10 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A precious stone, usually of substantial monetary value or prized for its beauty or shine.
  2. Any precious or highly valued thing or person.
  3. Anything of small size, or expressed within brief limits, which is regarded as a gem on account of its beauty or value, such as a small picture, a verse of poetry, or an epigram.
  4. Internet content of good quality.
  5. A gemma or leaf bud.
  6. A geometrid moth of the species Orthonama obstipata.
  7. A package containing programs or libraries for the Ruby programming language.
  8. A size of type between brilliant (4-point) and diamond (4½-point), running 222 lines to the foot.
  9. A strong, dominating pitching performance.

verb

  1. To adorn with, or as if with, gems.

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English gemme, gimme, yimme, ȝimme, from Old English ġimm, from Proto-West Germanic *gimmu (“gem”) and Old French gemme (“gem”), both from Latin gemma (“a swelling bud; jewel, gem”). Doublet of gemma and Gemma.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.