We saw the delightfully, deliciously dark Sweeney Todd over the holiday. In this scene Alan Rickman accuses a boy of “gandering at [his] ward.” Which Trick Fist says "doesn't seem to hold any of the double-entendre you'd hope it would."

I'm not sure about double-entendre, but I've had geese for years, and I was really intrigued with the way the word is used here. Gandering seems to be in the same vein as banty rooster to me. So I did a little research. Just intuitively, I thought it meant a bit more than merely looking.

World Wide Words. A quick, er, gander at the word’s history is illuminating. It seems the verb to gander in this sense is actually American in origin, something I find more than a little surprising, because it sounds English to me. A little more delving, however, shows that the roots of the expression are indeed from this side of the pond. A work of 1887, The Folk-Speech of South Cheshire, says, “Gonder, to stretch the neck like a gander, to stand at gaze”. The next known example is from the Cincinnati Enquirer of 9 May 1903: “Gander, to stretch or rubber your neck”. It is claimed that it comes from thieves’ slang.

There’s your source. Think of a gaggle of farmyard geese, wandering about in their typically aimless and stupid way, poking their noses in everywhere and twisting their necks to stare at anything that might be interesting. Geese are the archetypal rubberneckers. No doubt to gander became the term because to goose had already been borrowed; this was taken from the way that the birds were known to put their beaks embarrassingly — and sometimes painfully — into one’s more private places.

Rickman and Depp sing Pretty Women. Can't get this one out of my head.