Confusing Words from Gait to Gelt

Would you close off a pasture with a gait or a gate? Is a gallop or a galop a dance? When you place a bet, do you gamble or gambol? Would someone be strangled with a garret or a garote?

gait, gate
Gait is a manner of walking, stepping, or running.
If Jenny was to have any hope of winning the upcoming race, she would have to speed up her gait.
A gate is a movable barrier, usually on hinges, closing an opening in a fence, wall, or other enclosure.
The gate, old and rusted with age, was the only barrier to the wide open field.

gaited, gated
Gaited means having a particular gait. You could have a slow-gaited horse that would never have any hopes of winning a race. Or you could say the stiff-gaited elderly woman needed help carrying her groceries.
The nimble, fast-gaited horse left the others behind.
Gated simply means having a gate.
The gated community had a waiting list of people who wanted to live there.

gallop, galop
To gallop is to run rapidly.
The antelope took off in a gallop when she spotted the leopard.
A galop is a lively dance in duple measure performed with sliding steps from side to side and popular in the 19th century. It is also the music for this dance.
The room was overflowing with couples dancing the galop.

gamble, gambol
To gamble is to stake or risk money, or anything of value, on the outcome of something involving chance.
The gamble that her store would be a success paid off.
To gambol is to skip about, as in dancing or playing; frolic. As a noun, it means skipping about or playing.
The children were taken to the park so they would have room to gambol.

garret, garote
A garret is an attic, usually a small, wretched one.
The servant girl was made to live in the garret.
Garote is a method of capital punishment of Spanish origin in which an iron collar is tightened around a condemned person’s neck until death occurs by strangulation or by injury to the spinal column at the base of the brain. It is also spelled garrote and garrotte. Today, it is an instrument, usually a cord or wire with handles attached at the ends, used for strangling a victim.
The serial killer was known for using a garote on his victims.

geld, gelt
To geld is to take strength, vitality, or power from; weaken or subdue. It also means to castrate (an animal, especially a horse). In English history, a geld is a tax paid to the crown by landholders under the Anglo-Saxon and Norman kings.
The vet paid a visit to the farm to geld the horse.
Gelt is the past tense of geld. But gelt is also a slang for money.
The value of the breeding horse went down once he had been gelt.

Recommended Articles:
Confusing Words from Ewe to Exhilarate
Confusing Words from Expropriation to Factitious
Confusing Words from Facts to Fate
Confusing Words from Fated to Filter
Confusing Words from Find to Flex
Confusing Words from Flew to Foreword