Gawpy

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha.

Hi.

This is Oliver in Chicago.

Hello, Oliver in Chicago. Welcome to the show.

What’s up? What can we do for you?

So I have a word that I have heard used in my family for a very long time. My grandmother uses it, and we’ve never heard anyone else other than her family use it before. And the word is goppy.

Goppy.

You would spell G-O-P-P-Y, and it means to describe someone or something that someone has done as foolish. And it can be used G-O-P as a noun to describe someone as a fool.

Well, you’re not alone. There are other people that use these, but they spell it differently. G-A-W-P, G-A-U-P, sometimes with a Y. And what’s really interesting here, this is all related to not necessarily the person being dumb, but looking dumb. So your mouth is gaping open. It is related to the word gape.

So we have a wide variety of spellings of these words, gop and goppous and gapey.

Gopping.

Yeah, gopping.

I’ve heard the word gopping before.

Oh, you have?

Yeah, there we go. So you’re standing there slack-jawed, looking like you just don’t really have any sense at all, you know? And it’s used as a noun as well?

Yeah, it’s all over. So there’s all of these various spellings of these words, and they’re all connected to each other and they all have something to do with yawning or your mouth standing open.

I learned this first from Mark Twain, who in a couple of his books and stories, he uses the expression gaping and stretching. He uses gaping. And by this, he literally means your mouth open, your arms out, like that. And you just look kind of like you’re just letting the air out. I don’t know what it is.

Okay.

Is it restricted to a certain period?

Nope, pretty widespread. I would say that all of this is slowly declining. We do find less use of this again and again. It tends to be dialectical at this point and a little archaic. You will find it pop up in literature and fiction here and there, and occasionally people will use it. But it’s pretty rare these days.

But all of these words are all related. I don’t want to get too much into the when and where’s and which came first, but G-A-W-P is a really common spelling for GAP. It is directly related to gape, G-A-P-E, and they all have a variety of meanings that mean to look like a simpleton or a fool or an idiot, somebody with just standards.

Interesting.

And my grandmother uses it to emphasize the word fool. So she would say, oh, you goppy fool.

Nice.

And to emphasize it. A little more, a little extra thrown in there just to double up on the foolishness.

Yeah, exactly. In the Octopus Dictionary, there’s an interesting one. I mentioned this a second ago, gopus, G-A-W-P-U-S. And there was a time in the 1800s when this was used to mean a silly person or a fool. That one never really caught on here in the U.S., but it’s interesting to see how much variety there is in this.

Interesting.

Well, my grandmother is English, so I don’t know if that plays into it at all.

Where was she from?

What part of England?

She is from London. Her mother, my great-grandmother, and her sisters would use it. And their parents, my great-greats, were Russian and Polish Jews living in England. I was born in England, so I have this weird dialect of Jewish, English, East Coast, Midwest dialect I live with.

Nice.

I love it.

That’s a nice mix.

An eccentric voice.

Yeah, very good.

Yeah.

Oliver, so I’m glad we were able to connect your family word to the larger history of the world. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for answering the full question for us. We really appreciate it.

Thanks, Oliver.

Thanks for calling.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you’ve got a word that you think is just yours, but you’re hoping it’s connected to the larger patterns of the world, this is the place. 877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.