海角大神

A聽friend of mine told me recently that she was 鈥済obsmacked鈥� by the price of a new Apple computer monitor stand, which costs $1,000, monitor not included. That is indeed enough to make a person stare open-mouthed in astonishment, wondering what on earth that piece of metal could be doing to make it worth so much money.

Gobsmacked was originally a British word but has been making inroads into the U.S. since the 1980s, probably because it is so evocative, and so much fun to say. It also encapsulates the way English often represents extreme surprise. In word after word, we are struck by things out of nowhere, and they rob us of our power of speech.听

Gobsmacked itself is a combination of smack (鈥渢o hit鈥�) and gob, which was originally a Northern English, Scottish, and Irish word for 鈥渕outh,鈥� but is now used throughout the United Kingdom. My London-born mother-in-law has been known to say 鈥渟hut your gobs!鈥� to my children, jokingly, I am sure. When you are smacked in the gob, you鈥檙e going to stop gabbing (a related word). You are 鈥渁stounded; speechless or incoherent with amazement,鈥� as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it.

Dumbfound and dumbstruck make the same connection. 鈥淒umb鈥� here means 鈥渋ncapable of speech, mute,鈥� as it has since it was first used in Old English. In the 19th century, this word acquired a new sense, stupid, which nowadays influences the way we interpret its earlier meaning. It is thus considered derogatory to say 鈥渉e is dumb鈥� while it remains acceptable to say, for example, 鈥渟he is blind.鈥� Dumbstruck (1586) and dumbfound (1653), though, evolved before they took on that negative connotation. Dumbstruck wears its sense on its sleeve 鈥� it means 鈥渟truck dumb鈥� or, as Merriam-Webster defines it, 鈥渕ade silent by astonishment.鈥� Dumbfound is a little more complicated. It derives from the verb 鈥渢o confound,鈥� to surprise and completely confuse someone. Switch con- for dumb- and you get another word that means 鈥渢o make speechless with astonishment.鈥�

In 鈥淧aradise Lost鈥� (1667), John Milton introduced agape, 鈥渟peechless with astonishment,鈥� specifically because your mouth is hanging wide open. Princely riches will dazzle a crowd, he writes, 鈥渁nd set them all agape.鈥� Since the 19th century, agape has often been paired with aghast (鈥渟truck with dismay or terror鈥�), as in this marvelous 1868 description of teachers who try to intimidate rather than educate their students, 鈥渂randishing hideous algebraic roots, and launching sesquipedalian thunders at poor boys and girls, agape and aghast.鈥� All the math and the long words leave the poor students staring in open-mouthed amazement and quaking with terror.

Aghast also contributes to another wonderful 鈥渟truck speechless鈥� word, flabbergasted, which made its first recorded appearance in an anonymous 1772 list of Terrible New Words, along with bored. While etymologists seem to agree about -gast, there is lots of debate about flabber.听

Some argue that it derives from flabby, but others favor flap. If the latter is correct, it probably comes from the sound of lips flapping without producing words, or harks back to an old sense of flap as 鈥渁 sudden blow.鈥� Whatever its etymology, though, I鈥檇 say that among all the words that equate extreme surprise with losing the power of speech, flabbergasted offers gobsmacked its only possible competition.