The story
- Old French · derived fromgargouille
- French · derived fromgargouiller“to gargle”
- English todaygargle
From French gargouiller (“to gargle”), from Old French gargouille, gargole (“gutter, throat”). Compare gargoyle and Spanish garganta. Displaced non-native Middle English gargargisen (“to gargle”) from Latin, and native Old English swillan (“to gargle”) (ancestor of English swill).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.