It's "gauge," not "guage"

[Eddie Sheehy]

I have two vintage boxes of Gibson Mandocello hand-made strings (they are red boxes with a NO. 207 printed on a label) but the word gauge or guage does not appear on them...

[Bernie Daniel]

Sorry, but "this" referred to the lack of an overarching guideline, the inconsistency of this aspect of the language, not the etymology of this one word (which my Webster's Collegiate explained adequately). But perhaps your interest and effort is worth a guilder. I did notice there seems to be a tendency for "gua" words with a pronounced "u" to come from Spanish, and for "gua" words with an unpronounced "u" to come from French, but there is no guarantee this is consistently true. Still a lot of guesswork involved in this.

Or even as "ah" for example -- guano which also is derived from the Spanish "Quechua wanu" meaning manure.

[Fran]

There are lots of candidates for spelling mistakes in the musical world and elsewhere:
gauge
embouchure
amateur
cymbals
accordion
rubato
...
The guy at the print shop who put together the plate for the Gibson strings possibly had little or no education and had no idea what "gauge" meant !

[mrmando]

Cleaning out the basement last summer I came across a box of EXLAX from the '60's -- I'd have put it on eBay except it looks like some mice got into it -- wonder how they fared with it?

Keep cleaning the basement and you might find your answer.

[Gerry Hastie]

I'm not surprised that a word with a misplaced letter U has happened in America. It seems that for some words the spelling was just much too difficult for words like favourite, saviour, colour, rigour, etc.