This word comes to us from French; it literally translates to “galley.” It adopted its modern meaning through its use in the French play “Scapin the Schemer” by Molière. In the three-act comedy, the character Géronte repeatedly asks, “Mais que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?” In English, the meaning of this line roughly equates to, “But what the hell was he going to do in this coterie of undesirable people?” “Coterie” is another French loanword that means “a small group of people with shared interests.”