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Reader question: Please explain “gamut of emotions” in this passage (Sir Alex Ferguson: reaching 1,500 Manchester United games is ‘incredible’, Guardian.co.uk, May 17, 2013): Ferguson was asked whether any single thing stood out as he steps down from a job he took in 1986. He said: “Twenty-six years at Manchester United is fantastic, so just the whole thing. The day I came here was a privilege and the day I left I’ve been honoured. You run the gamut of emotions of course, it's such a great football club and I’ve been lucky to be here that time. The whole being here is something to be proud of.” My comments:If you run the gamut of emotions, you experience every kind of emotion there is. If Sir Alex Ferguson were Chinese, he could’ve used a food analogy, saying that 26 years at United has let him taste all the sour, the sweet, the bitter and the hot spicy of managerial life. Run the gamut, instead, is a musical analogy, gamut referring to a complete scale of musical notes, or the whole range of sound an instrument makes. Simply put, if you run your fingers through all the keys of the piano one by one, from the left to right, you will be running the gamut of all sounds the piano can make – and if done in rapid succession, you will hear a ringing sound resembling a tinkling stream of water. Anyways, for Ferguson to say that he’d “run the gamut of emotions” in the 26 years at the helms of Manchester United, one of the best football clubs in the English Premiership, is to say he’s experienced all the feelings one can feel, from good to bad, from happy to sad. | 
