gallery
Pluralgalleries
Pluralgalleries
Formsgalleries, gallerying, galleried
- 1A building, room, or institution for displaying and preserving important objects, especially works of art.
The gallery acquired a rare sculpture for its permanent collection.
Several galleries lend their finest works to the touring exhibition.
Similarmuseum
- 2A business that buys, sells, and displays works of art.
The gallery represents a dozen emerging painters and handles all their sales.
Several galleries closed after the art market slumped.
Note
The commercial side of the word: a place where the art on the walls is for sale, and where you might hear that a piece is available at a gallery, if you can afford it. Its near-synonyms are dealer's and art dealer's. Unlike the museum sense, whose job is to exhibit and conserve, a gallery of this kind buys and sells, so the work passes through it rather than staying.
- 3A browsable collection of images, font styles, or similar items, especially on a computer.
The design software opens a gallery of font styles you can preview before choosing.
Each photo in the gallery loads as a thumbnail you can tap to enlarge.
Similarcollection, library, album
Note
Software borrowed the picture of the exhibition room: items laid out side by side to be looked over and chosen. Typical phrases are a gallery of image thumbnails and a clip-art gallery in a word processor. The items are usually shown small, as thumbnails. A gallery in this sense is something you open, scroll and pick from, never something you visit.
- 4The highest seating area in a theater, concert hall, or auditorium, projecting from the rear or side walls.
The cheapest tickets put you in the gallery, far above the orchestra.
Latecomers were sent up to the gallery so they wouldn't disturb the front rows.
Similarbalcony
- 5The group of spectators watching an event, considered collectively.
The gallery fell silent as the player lined up the decisive shot.
He couldn't resist playing to the gallery whenever the cameras turned his way.
Similaraudience, crowd, spectators, onlookers
Note
The crowd takes its name from the place where it sits. A delighted Wembley gallery cheered England in BBC Sport's 2011 report, and the idiom appealing to the gallery or playing to the gallery describes performing for the onlookers rather than for the matter at hand. Politicians are the usual targets of the phrase. Treat gallery here as a single collective noun.
- 6A covered walkway, especially one that runs along a building's wall, with arches or columns holding it up along its outer edge.
A colonnaded gallery ran the length of the palace's south front.
Visitors walked the covered gallery to stay out of the rain.
Similararcade, colonnade, loggia, walkway
Note
The architectural sense lies closest to the word's roots. Old French galerie meant "a long portico." The Medieval Latin galeria behind it is of unknown origin, though it may be an alteration of Latin galilea, "church porch," probably named after Galilee. Galleries of this kind are open along one side through arches or columns, and they typically look out onto gardens.
- 7The section of a courtroom, often raised and at the rear, where the public sits to watch a trial.
Members of the victim's family watched from the gallery throughout the hearing.
A murmur ran through the gallery when the verdict was read.
Note
The courtroom's public seats are set apart from the trial itself. The people there watch the proceedings but take no part in them. When they break that silence, the outburst is memorable. In Paul McCartney's "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" (1969), Rose and Valerie are screaming from the gallery that he must go free. A lawyer said to be appealing to the gallery is performing for the watching crowd.
- 8A horizontal passage or level driven through rock in a mine.
Timber supports lined the gallery to keep the roof from collapsing.
The old mine's galleries stretched for miles beneath the valley.
Note
Miners have two other words for the same thing, level and drive, and all three name a passage that runs roughly horizontally rather than plunging downward. Galleries are usually told apart by depth, as in the lower galleries, because a working mine has several, one beneath another. They carry workers, ore and air along a seam. It is the industrial cousin of the covered passage cut through earth.
- 9A covered passage cut through earth or masonry, especially in fortifications.
Engineers extended the gallery under the rampart to plant explosives.
Each gallery let the garrison move between bastions unseen.
Note
In military engineering, a gallery is a tunnel built for cover. The galleries of a fort are cut through earth or masonry so that soldiers can move between defensive positions unseen, or work their way beneath enemy works. The same image of a long, enclosed passage carries over to the miner's level.
- 10A channel that carries engine oil to the parts needing lubrication, such as the main bearings.
Mechanics flushed the gallery to clear out the sludge.
The main gallery feeds oil to each of the crankshaft bearings.
Note
Engine builders use gallery for the oil's highway through the block. Colin Campbell's The Sports Car (2012) describes oil being delivered to the main gallery. The plural oil galleries is just as common, and it appears in Tim Gilles's Automotive Engines (2014), where metal grit from an earlier failure lodged in them and later came loose. Keeping these channels clear is part of keeping the bearings alive.
- 11The control room from which a television production is directed and managed.
The director called shots from the gallery during the live broadcast.
Producers crowded into the gallery to monitor the evening bulletin.
Note
Television's name for the room where a program is actually run. From the gallery the director and production team watch the camera feeds and cut between them. A director calls shots from the gallery, and producers sit in it. On a live broadcast, the gallery is where the program is actually made.
- 12A boring trail or tunnel produced by an insect as it tunnels through wood.
Bark beetles carve an intricate gallery beneath the surface of dying trees.
Each larva extends its own gallery away from the central tunnel.
Note
Entomologists use the word for the tunnel itself, the trail a wood-boring insect leaves as it feeds beneath bark or through timber. Galleries are usually named for their maker, as in beetle gallery. Their pattern is often distinctive enough to identify which species was responsible, so the gallery is read as evidence as well as damage.
- 13A structural part of a light fixture that often provides the mounting for the diffuser.
The lamp's gallery supports the frosted diffuser beneath the bulb.
A loose gallery let the shade rattle whenever the fan switched on.
- 14A projection off the ring of a monocle that helps secure the lens in the eye socket.
The monocle's gallery gripped the edge of his eye socket, holding the lens steady.
Without a proper gallery, the lens kept dropping from his eye.
- 15Ellipsis of gallery forest.
Wildlife concentrated in the gallery threading across the dry grassland.
The gallery shaded the watercourse even at the height of the dry season.
Note
The full term, gallery forest, names riparian woodland: a dense forest of mature trees without understory, lining both banks of a river in otherwise treeless country. Once the full term has been established, ecological writing often drops forest. The clipped gallery then stands for the whole ribbon of trees.
- 16To show off, especially in order to win the favor of spectators.
The young players gallery for the cameras instead of focusing on the match.
She tends to gallery whenever important guests are watching.
Similargrandstand, showboat, posture
Note
This verb belongs to the English of Trinidad and Tobago. Its idea is the one behind playing to the gallery, compressed into a single verb. Elsewhere, listeners may take it for a misused noun, so it is safest in Trinidadian contexts. It inflects regularly: she galleries, they are gallerying, he galleried for the cameras.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
The word passed from Middle English galery through Middle French and Old French galerie ("a long portico, a gallery") from Medieval Latin galeria ("gallery"), which is of unknown origin. It may perhaps be an alteration of Latin galilea ("church porch"), probably from Galilaea, Galilee, a region of Israel.