gang [OE] A gang is literally a group of people who ‘go about’ together. The word comes from Old Norse gangr or ganga, ‘gait, course, or going’, and is related to Scots gang ‘to go’. In early use gang meant ‘a journey’, and later developed the senses ‘way or passage’, and ‘a set of things which go together’. In the early 17th century it started to be applied to people too, specifically a ship’s crew or a group of workmen, and soon any band of people going about together, especially when involved in some disreputable or criminal activity, could be described disapprovingly as a gang. Both gangway [OE] and gangplank [L18th] are based on the original ‘going’ sense of the word. Gangster, dating from the late 19th century, was altered in US Black English in the 1980s to gangsta, and applied both to a member of a gang and to a type of rap music.