Words

gammy, adj.

NEVER LET it be said that this column does not work hard on your behalf - hours on the sofa with the new 24-volume American National Biography, which passes the first test: it includes that marvellous singer Mabel Mercer, admired by Sinatra. The quintessence of Manhattan sophistication, she was in fact born in Burton, in 1900, product of a chance meeting between an English-Welsh music-hall singer and a touring black acrobat.

She was teased at school for being, among other things, gammy. It is a sense not in the OED, for she was in fact fit - but left-handed, then deemed almost as bad as having a wonky ankle. The word began - as game - in the north Midlands by the 18th century, but a satisfactory etymology has not emerged.