Listing 8 entries:
Also spelt "gwine", this is simply a slang term for "going" or "going to", used as a declaration of intent.
The word originated from Gullah, which is a creole (or pidgin) language spoken among some African-American communities in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida in the 19th century (and still today, to varying extents).
As the word crossed over from Gullah to vernacular English, it stayed within a similar geographic region — so you're unlikely to hear it very often outside the Southern United States.
A device that allows different isotopes of a gas to be separated from each other.
A typical gas centrifuge is a tall metal cylinder, inside which an inner container rotates at high speed, using centrifugal force and convection currents to separate gas molecules of differing weights.
The primary use of a gas centrifuge is to separate uranium-235 atoms from uranium-238, in order to produce "enriched uranium", a key fuel for nuclear fission reactors and nuclear weapons.
Link: How the Gas Centrifuge Changed the Quest for Nuclear Weapons
Attempting to undermine someone's sanity.
From the 1938 British play Gaslight, where a man tries to steal his wife's inheritance by slowly driving her insane (a dimmed gas-powered light forms a pivotal plot point).
The play was twice adapted into a movie: the more well-known 1944 version starred Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman and Angela Lansbury (in her film debut).
A South American cowboy.
Originating from the pampas in Argentina, gauchos were familiar figures in the 18th/19th centuries, and typically were daring and skillful horsemen and plainsmen.
Immortalised on film thanks to the 1927 Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckling epic The Gaucho.
A large travelling bag made out of stiff leather with a hinged opening on top.
So called because they were the favoured hand-luggage of 19th century British Prime Minister William Gladstone (1809-1898).
Note that while Fagen phonetically pronounces it Glad-STONE in the song, it should really be Glad-STUN, to match the correct pronunciation of Gladstone's name.
Manhattan's only private park — located on East 20th Street, between Third Avenue and Park Avenue South.
The park has been private since it was originally developed in the 1830s. Nowadays, it is only accessible to guests of the nearby Gramercy Park Hotel and to local residents — if they pay $350 a year for the privilege of owning a key.
A slang term used by computer nerds, meaning to understand or comprehend.
The term originated in the 1961 Robert A. Heinlein science-fiction novel Stranger In a Strange Land, and implies intimate and exhaustive knowledge. You grok?
Link: The Jargon Lexicon
The second-largest city in Mexico, with a total population of 4.3 million.
Known as "The Pearl of the West", its most famous landmark is the 16th century cathedral, rebuilt after several earthquakes and hence a unique architectural medley of Gothic, Baroque, Arabic and Greek.