#201 Gaelic Galore

The other day I was talking to a friend and he said I should come down to the buffet at a local casino because they had jumbo shrimp galore. That got my attention for two reasons: First, I’m always intrigued by oxymoronic food like jumbo shrimp and secondly, and more importantly, my etymological antenna perked up when he used the word galore.
Now there’s a word I always wanted to google up: galore. From whence doth it emerge? The dictionary defines it as “in great numbers,” and, “existing with abundance.” The etymological dictionary says it comes from the Gaelic, “gu leoir,” meaning “sufficiently,” or “enough.” Interesting—at least to my get-a-life mind. Something that used to mean just enough now means over-the-top abundance. Funny how things change. Like when they had to add another size of latte cup cause “Grande” wasn’t enough anymore. Now they have “Vente.” Kind of like the coffee drink equivalent of a Big Gulp. Which itself somehow introduced the notion that people actually need to consume a half gallon of pop in a sitting. And also apparently led to larger cupholders for vehicles and larger SUV’s to hold the cupholders. Personally, if there isn’t a rest stop every thirty miles, I’m not drinking anything. Until they invent a catheter equipped SUV, the pop stand is off road, off limits, and off radar.
As more than one person has noticed, there’s an odd thing about lattes: there’s short and three kinds of big; tall, Grande and Vente, but no regular. Perhaps because there’s no fancy Italian word for regular. No, “short” and “tall” aren’t Italian. Why the sudden excursion into Italian descriptions of size when things get really big?
I digress. The concept of Galore has grown as well. Because apparently, saying in ancient Ireland that you had “beer galore” meant you had barely enough beer. When it crossed the Atlantic that prodigious quantity of beer must have seemed different to the tee totaling descendents of puritans. Now that same amount was abundant. Over the top. Too much. As history, and apparently etymology, belongs to the victors, galore now means a whole bunch. Dude they got a boatload of beer at that party, says the young man. Ah, you reply genteelly, they have beer galore. All depends on your point of view I guess. One man’s too much is another’s too little.
Perhaps we can look forward to a new latte size. And since it’s Italian, we’ll have to pronounce the final “E”. Tall, Grande, Vente, and an even larger and more beautiful coffee drink in all its Galor-eh.
America, ya gotta love it.