Glossary
Uniform fabric terms: G
The vocabulary that turns up on spec sheets, quotations and tender documents, defined in a line or two. Where a term deserves more than that, it links to the guide that covers it properly.
G
- Gabardine
- A tightly woven twill with a clear diagonal rib on the face and a smooth back. Firm, hard-wearing and long used for uniform trousers and outerwear. Read the guide on Gabardine
- Gaj
- The Hindi word for a yard, still used in retail and tailoring conversation alongside metres. Converting before you order avoids a quantity being read as yards at one end and metres at the other. Read the guide on Gaj
- Ganz-Griesser
- The whiteness formula usually named where optical brightener levels are high. Because a brightener fluoresces, a UV-included and a UV-filtered measurement will not agree and neither is wrong, so the UV calibration condition has to be stated with the figure. Read the guide on Ganz-Griesser
- Garment dyeing
- Dyeing a garment after it has been stitched, rather than dyeing the cloth before cutting. It moves both shade control and shrinkage risk to after assembly, where there is far less room to correct either, which is why institutional uniform programmes normally use piece-dyed cloth instead. Read the guide on Garment dyeing
- GCC
- The Gulf Cooperation Council, the six-member bloc of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain. It matters to a fabric buyer as a customs and conformity area rather than only a market: member states share a common external tariff and increasingly align their conformity schemes, while India has a separate bilateral agreement with Oman and a bloc-level negotiation running with the GCC as a whole.
- Godown
- A warehouse or storage room, in Indian trade usage. Storage matters for fabric, because cloth takes up moisture from the air and stored rolls can mark or fade if they are stacked badly or left in light. Read the guide on Godown
- GOTS
- The Global Organic Textile Standard, a certification scheme covering organic fibre content along with processing and social criteria, verified through a certified supply chain rather than a single test report. Buyers asking for it are asking for chain-of-custody documentation, not a fabric property. Read the guide on GOTS
- Greige
- Fabric as it comes off the loom, before dyeing or finishing. Pronounced grey-zh, and sometimes written grey fabric. Read the guide on Greige
- Grey scale
- The 1 to 5 visual scale used to rate colour fastness results, with separate scales for change in the fabric's own shade and for staining onto an adjacent white. Grade 5 is no perceptible change, grade 1 is severe. Read the guide on Grey scale
- Ground rent
- A container freight station or inland container depot's charge for the ground a container occupies at the facility. Laden containers carry their own free days and slab rates, separate from both the cargo storage charge and the shipping line's detention. Read the guide on Ground rent
- GRS
- The Global Recycled Standard, a chain-of-custody certification for recycled content that also sets social and environmental criteria at certified sites. It tells you how much of the fibre is recycled and that the claim was tracked through the chain; it does not test the finished fabric for harmful substances. Its owner has announced that GRS and RCS are to be absorbed into a successor Materials Matter Standard, with certification opening from the end of December 2026. Read the guide on GRS
- GSM
- Grams per square metre: the standard measure of fabric weight. It is the single most quoted figure in uniform fabric, and it is not a measure of quality on its own. Read the guide on GSM
- GSP
- The Generalised System of Preferences, a scheme under which a developed market grants reduced or zero duty on imports from designated developing countries. The EU's enhanced tier, GSP+, adds deeper preferences in return for ratifying a list of conventions. India is not a GSP+ beneficiary, which is part of why Indian cloth can pay more duty into the EU than cloth from some neighbouring countries.
- GST
- Goods and Services Tax, India's domestic indirect tax. Fibre, yarn and fabric all sit at a flat 5 percent since September 2025, separate from any customs duty charged on an imported input. It applies only to a domestic Indian sale; it plays no part in an export quote priced FOB or CIF. Read the guide on GST
Looking for something that isn't here? The full guide library goes deeper on every term, and you can always ask us directly.
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