Interesting, then, that the first discovered written use of a word can lag way behind the actual use. Gobsmacked was a word being used in my social circle (possibly “social” isn’t quite the word to use here, but that’s another story) in the mid-seventies in Australia, and my father used the term prior to that on occasion. That is not the result of memory lapse either, but fact.
A colleague, a Sydney University English graduate, remembers it from school in the late 1960s. His memory of it just about squares with mine, and we’ve both worked in the same office and in the same business – on and off – for the past 35 years or so.
I get the feeling sometimes that too much might be attached to the first discovery a term or word in print and that some slack should be applied if using it as a yardstick. Obviously it is important but it still gives an approximation at best.
Mary:
May 15th, 2014 at 7:54 am
I had to check gobsmacked as it was part of a tweet today, quoted in the Washington Post in reference to the dismissal of Jill Abramson. I’m interested in the choice of the word and the fact that there’s a connotation of violence. Not much is being explained about this change of leadership.
“Everyone gob-smacked in NYT newsroom over Jill Abramson leaving and Dean Baquet taking over,” tweeted Times arts reporter Patricia Cohen not long after the news broke.
Though the trail of written evidence was until recently believed to date only from the early 1980s, we knew it went back a lot further in the spoken language. A report in the Guardian in February 1985, relating an encounter with the famous footballer Sir Stanley Matthews, implied that it was even then 40 years old. This is supported by a recent find:
I’m so amazed that only the Malderbury dialect can express my condition: “I’m properly gob-smacked”.
A Woman of Bangkok, by Jack Reynolds, 1959. A version of the text was published in 1956 as A Sort of Beauty. There’s no such place as Malderbury.
P Nalder:
October 25th, 2016 at 2:38 am
The older meaning of ‘maze’ is alive and well in dialect. For instance in Devon “I was fair mazed” which means “I didn’t know what to make of it.”
It’s not therefore, after all, an older meaning but an extant one.
Tom Malley:
May 12th, 2017 at 12:11 pm
Gobsmacked is Irish slang. It comes from the word “gob” meaning beak, and is also slang for mouth. It is also used in the saying “Hold your gob,” meaning “Shut up!”
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Link love: language (24) « Sentence first:
November 11th, 2010 at 11:03 am
[…] flabbergasted and […]
ST-EMM:
December 1st, 2010 at 12:33 am
Interesting, then, that the first discovered written use of a word can lag way behind the actual use. Gobsmacked was a word being used in my social circle (possibly “social” isn’t quite the word to use here, but that’s another story) in the mid-seventies in Australia, and my father used the term prior to that on occasion. That is not the result of memory lapse either, but fact.
A colleague, a Sydney University English graduate, remembers it from school in the late 1960s. His memory of it just about squares with mine, and we’ve both worked in the same office and in the same business – on and off – for the past 35 years or so.
I get the feeling sometimes that too much might be attached to the first discovery a term or word in print and that some slack should be applied if using it as a yardstick. Obviously it is important but it still gives an approximation at best.
Mary:
May 15th, 2014 at 7:54 am
I had to check gobsmacked as it was part of a tweet today, quoted in the Washington Post in reference to the dismissal of Jill Abramson. I’m interested in the choice of the word and the fact that there’s a connotation of violence. Not much is being explained about this change of leadership.
“Everyone gob-smacked in NYT newsroom over Jill Abramson leaving and Dean Baquet taking over,” tweeted Times arts reporter Patricia Cohen not long after the news broke.
Lance:
September 8th, 2016 at 12:08 pm
There is some evidence of it being in print as early as 1956. Here is the quote from the website: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-gob1.htm
Though the trail of written evidence was until recently believed to date only from the early 1980s, we knew it went back a lot further in the spoken language. A report in the Guardian in February 1985, relating an encounter with the famous footballer Sir Stanley Matthews, implied that it was even then 40 years old. This is supported by a recent find:
I’m so amazed that only the Malderbury dialect can express my condition: “I’m properly gob-smacked”.
A Woman of Bangkok, by Jack Reynolds, 1959. A version of the text was published in 1956 as A Sort of Beauty. There’s no such place as Malderbury.
P Nalder:
October 25th, 2016 at 2:38 am
The older meaning of ‘maze’ is alive and well in dialect. For instance in Devon “I was fair mazed” which means “I didn’t know what to make of it.”
It’s not therefore, after all, an older meaning but an extant one.
Tom Malley:
May 12th, 2017 at 12:11 pm
Gobsmacked is Irish slang. It comes from the word “gob” meaning beak, and is also slang for mouth. It is also used in the saying “Hold your gob,” meaning “Shut up!”