Gobsmacked

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

This is William in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Hi, William. Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

What can we do you for?

Well, I’m going to inquire about words of surprise.

I like to watch…

Really?

Yes, really.

Oh, my gosh!

I like to watch the Antique Roadshow,

In part because people have interesting ways

To express surprise when they find out

The junk in Uncle Ned’s garage

Is worth thousands of dollars.

And usually they say, you know, you’re kidding or wow or really.

But recently a woman says, I’m absolutely gobshmacked.

And she repeated it later saying she was totally gobshmacked.

And I’ve certainly never heard the word gobshmacked before.

When I first heard it, I thought she said gobshmacked, which I think would be a good word.

And if it isn’t one, we ought to nominate it.

But what she said was gobsmacked.

Occasionally you hear flabbergasted and astounded, but I’ve never heard gobsmacked.

Wait, she said schmacked with a shmacked?

G-O-B-S-M-A-C-K.

Tell us about this woman.

How interesting.

She’d brought something to the road show.

She brought something to the antiques road show.

She found out that it was worth $12,000.

Wow.

And she said, oh, I’m absolutely gobsmacked.

And what was she like?

Was she old or young?

Was she American?

I would guess from her accent she may have been English.

Okay.

And I would guess that maybe she was 45, 50, I don’t know.

Okay.

And she was surprised.

And she was surprised.

Okay.

As we’ve talked about on the show before, when people are surprised, their most natural language comes out.

Yes.

You know, the thing that defeats schooling and education.

Yes.

That thing you say when you stub your toe in the middle of the night.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We won’t put that one on the radio.

No, no, no.

And where did this Antiques Roadshow episode?

This was Miami Beach.

Gobschmacked in Miami.

Schmacked.

Schmacked.

Really?

Gob we can be tidy about and just kind of take care of really quickly, but the schmacked.

That’s really interesting.

Schmacked, like hit.

Yeah.

But you’re saying with the sh sound, an sh sound at the beginning.

Well, maybe it’s just my pronunciation, but I think it’s gobschmacked.

Okay.

Well, gobsmacked is a word that I use all the time,

And I think I just picked it up from a well-traveled friend or something.

I don’t think it’s really local to the United States.

No, it’s not native to our vocabulary, no.

Right.

But the gob there may come from an Irish or Gaelic word meaning mouth.

Or beak.

Or beak.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, there’s a kind of candy that I grew up calling a jawbreaker,

But other people call it a gobstopper.

Yeah, I knew that.

I think there’s a brand name gobstopper.

Yeah, yeah, there is.

It’s a big hard candy that you suck on it.

It’s got colored layers and a little fire inside, right?

Yes, and you stick that in the little kid’s gob and it stops him up for a while, right?

Yeah, I only knew that as a jawbreaker.

Okay.

Yeah, so they’re gobstoppers and then gobsmacked is the idea that you’re sort of dumbstruck.

You’re dazed or surprised as if.

But literally when you’re surprised, you throw your hand up to your mouth.

You smack yourself in the gob.

That’s what these people do on the road show.

The hand just instinctively goes up to their lips.

They cover their mouths.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

I always had this mental picture of you being as dazed as if somebody smacked you in the mouth.

That works.

You think it’s smacking your hand to me?

I think it’s literally, because when you are genuinely surprised, as these people often are,

Because I’ve seen the show, and sometimes it looks like they already knew it was worth a lot.

But yeah, their hand goes right up to their mouths.

Oh, really?

They’re literally gobsmacked.

They are smacking themselves in the gob.

They’re smacking themselves in the mouth.

How weird.

Well, that’s a pretty good word.

We ought to hear that more often.

We should.

It’s a great one. Most Americans don’t use it. They probably know it from British music and television shows.

There’s a lot more of that kind of cross-Atlantic migration of entertainment coming our way rather than the other way.

So maybe more people start to use it, but it’s not that common here.

Yeah, it’s such a strong, powerful word. But I sure never thought of it as putting my own hand to my mouth. That’s interesting.

You know, there’s also, you can be gobstruck as well.

Gobstruck, yeah.

Yeah, gobstruck, yeah.

Which, again, I think feels like being punched in the mouth when you’re not expecting it.

I like yours. It’s more powerful.

I like somebody just throwing their arms back as if they’ve just been sucker-punched or clocked.

So, William, you’re picking that one up.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Well, good.

But I’m still nominating gushmacked as a new word.

It Googles a little bit. You can find one or two people using it on the Internet.

You can form a support group online.

Yeah, there’s a Facebook group for everything.

Well, thank you so much for calling, William.

Thank you. I’m amazed at what you know.

All right. Take care.

Are you gobsmacked, though?

Yes, I certainly am.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

You know, it’s strange when you consume a lot of media, you come across words and things that you’ve never heard before, and you make lists.

Well, call us and share those words with us, 877-929-9673, or send what you’ve found to words@waywordradio.org.