> > Django Cat wrote:
> >> On 5 Sep, 02:38, Dan Leifker <dleif...@leifker.com> wrote:
> >>> I came across a delicious BrE word today:gobsmacked. Never heard
> >>> it before. The context was something about Alaskans being
> >>>gobsmackedby the speed of Sarah Palin's rise in the U.S.
> >>> politics.

> >>> It appears thatgobsmacked, meaning utterly astonished, is
> >>> fixed as a past participle. Can you use it in other tenses,
> >>> something like "His answer would gobsmack anyone"?

> >>> dleifker

> >> While universally used, 'gobsmacked' is originally scouse.
> > I'll concede 'northern'.
> > Partridge doesn't even have it [1]. Cassell's does and, like
> > OED, can peg it no further back than the 80s. It's one of
> > those words I seem to have been hearing forever, particularly in my
> > Manchester home.

> The OED's earliest reference is to the Guardian in 1985 . To tell the
> truth, I thought the word was Irish but "gob" for mouth has long been
> used in NE England and Scotland, particularly as part of an injunction
> to close it.