gemors, noun

/xəmɔ(r)s/
Forms:
Also gammors, gemos.
Plurals:
gemorses.
Origin:
Afrikaans
slang
a. A mess, muddle, or state of confusion; a disaster.
1970 C. Livingstone Informant, Bloemfontein, Free StateThe children made such a gemors of the house, I spent three days cleaning up after them.
1970 C. Amm Informant, Bloemfontein, Free StateThat work is a gemors and it must be done over tidily.
1971 Informant, Grahamstown (now Makhanda, Eastern Cape)What a gemors it was in P.E. — we had two blowouts on the way and had to buy new tyres on a public holiday.
1973 R. Rodwell in Farmer’s Weekly 25 Apr. 45The walls are so tremendously thick, being made of large rough boulders, lime and sand, that the damage was mostly internal and, said Mr. Duckitt, some walls were a real gemors.
1980 Capetonian Jan. 26‘Jus-like,’ I says, ‘we got to go haastig down to where die gemors comes out die shoot in die basement en get dem blerry teef back!’
1984 Frontline Feb. 26Apartheid in CA (sc. Cape Town) is even more of a gemors and a generally lost cause than in Joeys.
1985 TV1, 28 Mar.You know the gemors we’re in, it’s HP up to the roof.
1987 Style Dec. 124An outside perspective is the only way to make sense of our national gemors.
1990 ‘Nataniel’ in Style July 64Pretoria to me is the epitome or concentration of everything that I hate about this country. The whole gemors starts there.
1990 ‘A. Le Toit’ in Style July 81This female and male role-playing is the basis for all the gemors between the sexes.
1991 E. Fitzgerald Informant, Cape Town, Western CapeShe couldn’t remember how many people were coming. She got the time of arrival wrong. What a gemors!
b. An insulting form of address or reference.
1981 Sunday Times 8 Mar. (Extra) 1The Chairman of the Graaff-Reinet Community Council..has threatened to lay a charge against a shop assistant who called him ‘’n gemors’ (a rubbish), unless she apologises.
1981 Voice 29 Apr.A batch of ‘gammorses’, misguided..barries, moegoes, dzaus and what have you.
A mess, muddle, or state of confusion; a disaster.
An insulting form of address or reference.
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gemeente, nounn.gemsbok, nounn.
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