noun
- the organ for breathing of most animals that live in water, as fish, lobsters, or clams, consisting of a simple saclike or complex feathery evagination of the body surface, usually richly supplied with blood
- the red flesh hanging below the beak of a fowl; wattle
- the flesh under and about the chin and lower jaw of a person
- any of the thin, leaflike, radiating plates on the undersurface of a mushroom, on which the basidiospores are produced
Origin:
ME gile, prob. < Anglo-N < or akin to ON gjǫlnar, jaws, gills, older Dan (fiske) gaeln, Swed gäl < IE base *ghelunā-, jaw > Gr chelynē, lip, jaw