Old English gōs, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch gans and German Gans, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin anser and Greek khēn.

• Geese have long been a mainstay of the farmyard, and are found in several idioms. If someone kills the goose that lays the golden eggs they destroy a reliable and valuable source of income. In one of Aesop's fables a man finds that one of his geese lays eggs of pure gold, which make him rich. But he grows dissatisfied with just one egg a day, and kills the goose in the mistaken belief that it will be filled with golden eggs. There is no gold inside it and no longer any more golden eggs. The US film producer Sam Goldwyn, famous for idiosyncratic expressions like ‘include me out’, is supposed to have said: ‘That's the way with these directors, they're always biting the hand that lays the golden egg.’ In America a goose egg is a score of zero in baseball and other sports. This derives from the egg shape of 0, in just the same way as does the cricketing term duck (originally ‘a duck's egg’). We associate the military marching step known as the goose-step with the Nazis, but the term was recorded much earlier than the 1930s, at the beginning of the 19th century. Goose-stepping soldiers advance by swinging each leg stiffly forwards without bending it at the knee, in a way reminiscent of geese. To goose someone (late 19th century) is to poke their bottom as a joke. This meaning probably comes from the way that geese can be aggressive and ready to peck at people unexpectedly. A gooseberry (mid 16th century) may be a modified version of German Krausebeere or the French dialect gozelle, or it may simply have been created by combining the existing words goose and berry. The ‘unwanted third party’ sense, as in ‘playing gooseberry’, dates from the 19th century. See also gossamer, sauce