The word has gotten a lot rarer since its peak, probably in the mid-20th century, but you’ll still occasionally see someone referred to as a “galoot.” Galoots are usually large, as in a “big galoot.” The “big” might be redundant though; there doesn’t seem to have been a galoot of any other size since the term appeared in the early 1800s.
“Galoot” originally meant a soldier. This was pretty clearly explained in a phrase book from 1819: “Galloot, a soldier.” Today’s connotation of awkwardness or oafishness didn’t come along until the 1860s, when another phrase book, this one listing sailors’ jargon, included “Galoot, an awkward soldier..A soubriquet for the young or ‘green’ marine.” It does seem that for its first several decades, “galoot” was a term mostly used by sailors talking about soldiers.
There’s another twist to the story: that first phrasebook, from 1819, was A New Vocabulary of the Flash Language by James Hardy Vaux, and it identified the word as Australian. That was part of the word’s origin story for some time. But then somebody did a bit of further investigation and found that while Vaux had published his book in Australia, he had written it while on a ship from England. In fact, he was one of the British convicts exiled to Australia as an alternative to prison. So it seems more likely that the term originated in England and was shipped off to Australia along with people like Vaux.
By the 1860s “galoot” was popping up in North America as well, but in making that jump it lost its associations with both sailors and soldiers. Mark Twain used it in Innocents Abroad: “He could lam any galoot of his inches in America.” Twain used it to mean simply an ordinary guy. It was used as a mild insult, meaning awkward or oafish, but by the 20th century that had turned around and “galoot” was more a term of endearment. You can hear it in 1940s movies in a line, usually spoken by the female lead, referring to the “big galoot” who was usually the male lead.
That usage in screenplays probably dated the term, which even now sort of sounds like midcentury jargon. Some words seem to have gotten stuck in association with a particular era, and a lot of that has come from movies and other media. “Galoot” probably won’t entirely disappear as long as it’s a useful way to anchor a piece of fiction in the right era — just like if we hear a line including “varlet,” we assume a medieval setting. So just remember, if you’re writing a story set in the 1940s, when the big galoot goes on the lam, he takes his gat but most likely leaves his moll behind.
