h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

International Women's Day? Oh my word, what's thats supposed to be good for? Like a mother's day, where we all are reminded to say thank you to our mothers by presenting them some flowers and chocolates once a year?

Canicula, it's not one of those syrupy days invented to sell cards, but stems from the universal suffrage movement of the 19th century. It's profile has been sufficiently high for many governments to produce a variety of significant pieces of equal rights legislation on the day in question, perhaps for fear of following in the footsteps of Czar Nicholas II, who was forced to abdicate as a result of the protests on IWD in 1917.

TC, the Hutton effect is the process by which one of the world's finer news-gathering organizations is required to go on a protracted bout of hair-shirted self-flagellation and hew to standards of journalistic proof that would satisfy a rabid Cartesian acolyte because of a small reporting slip-up, so as to deflect attention from the government's considerably lower standards of reportage.

I couldn't find that song either, unless you're mistaken: the closest matches I found were "J'Vais au pressing" and "Swing au pressing", although outside bets which contain the word pressing in the lyrics include 'Precox ejaculator' by Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine, 'Johnny go' by Jean Leloup and Renaud Séchan's 'Baston!' which contains the line "La rouquine du pressing, des minettes ou des putes". However, perhaps more apropos (apparently à propos is too ostentatious nowadays) to the thread is 'La langue francaise' by Léo Ferré ( http://www.paroles.net/chansons/17361.htm ), which makes extensive use of some exquisitely painful foreignisms.

Well I never knew that about gobsmacked, my American better half asked me once what it meant...and well I thought it were something to do with gobstoppers..

Ah dunno, I best I'd better go get my medication...

... but, but... isn't gob-smacker not far from gob-stopper?

thank you Mycroft, that's exactly what I think it were, and as all the other cheesy made-up days it won't a change a thing in our day-today life.

Cheers.

It was on this day, March 8th, 1867 that the British Parliament passed the British North America Act granting independence to the colonies that would become Canada.

We don't actually celebrate this day, so Women and the Soviet Revolutionaries are welcome to it. Canada Day is July 1st, because it took almost that long for the news to get here and then of course someone had to make sandwiches.



Mycroft, may the sand in your laptop find harmony with its native silicon crystals in a happy and productive way. And may you never be obliged to "go on a protracted bout of hair-shirted self-flagellation and hew to standards of journalistic proof that would satisfy a rabid Cartesian acolyte..." Your point about 'checking sources and research' is well taken and in future we will endeavour to achieve a higher academic standard. Inevitably, however, reportage will remain a highly subjective sport.

~jwf~

glad to hear from you, jwf, even when it was not directed to me...

at "La Langue francaise".

In my naivete I thought that gobsmacked meant literally "a smack on the gob" - not as violent as it sounds, just the action of putting one's hand on one's mouth so quickly it sounded like you were smacking yourself. In amazement, horror, surprise, etc. No masochistic undertones.

As for gobs**te, I had never heard of it, with or without the asterisks. Now I know it involves sailors' spittle, I hope I'll never have to think of it again.

Gobstoppers are large sweets, and the verb "to gob" (for our American viewers, who may not have this word) is to spit, but in a quite revolting way. "Gob" is a slang word for mouth. Have I left anything out?

I knew gob was slang for mouth...but the saliva thing, yes I have heard the term he gobbed on the street...and well, my mind I guess bualks at it...yeuch, so I didn't figure that into my own explanation!!

Gobsmacked....I thought smacked as a shock.....jaw dropping moment..

Gob = mouth
smacked = slapped

mouth slapped = surprize, shock, stunned etc.....

thats was I got to my conclusion of where gobsmacked came from!



Did you like it?

I mean that was HOW I got to my conclusion...

oh, I posted the same as you Trillian

not the full ticket today

*chuckles*

I seem to have caused a degree of confusion here. I never intended to go into the meaning of gobsmacked per se, as I assumed it was well understood. Gob, as has been asserted, does indeed mean the mouth, and smack does indeed mean hit, but not, in this case, literally. The sense is more akin to struck (as in stagestruck, for example), and is to do with the presumed state of a thing after it has been hit whether physically or emotionally (ie static). Thus gobsmacked is semantically identical to dumbstruck.

hello Mycroft

I'm always confused in varying degrees... Quite happy to take others with me for the ride..

Don't know what I were thinking the other day with gobstoppers and gobsmacked I guess I just picked up on the morpheme 'gob' and didn't quite make it to the end of the word...who knows...*chuckles* and then there is the reading - not reading all the posts afore I post or just skimming...my excuse is my pages take so damn long to load......*shrug*

Well anyhow...ta ra for now *waves*

I am in a permanent state of confusion.


Followed the same logical path as Vixen did, and ended up in the same conclusion.

Another confusing one is (not 'to shag', bets are high we had that already) is 'mug'...

TC,

" "Gob" is a slang word for mouth. Have I left anything out?"

Well ... if you mean that ...
"Gob music" is the celtic equivalent of scat singing:
"Diddly i di di, diddly iddly iddly iddly ... " fitted to the jigs and general fiddle music.

Flanders and Swann managed words to a Mozart Horn Concerto:
"I had a whim and I had to obey it,
to buy a french horn from a second hand shop ... "

>>"Gob music" is the celtic equivalent of scat singing<<

Unsurprising, as gob is a Celtic word, which I presume is imitative of a gulping sound; the verb means to guzzle. Only a thought, but gob music might mean drunken singing rather than mouth music. Anyway, gob's also used to mean "a lot of" but usually with fluid undertones, and there's also the charming diminutive gobbet - "gobbets of thy mother's bleeding heart" sticks rather vividly in my memory, from one of the Henrys. Goblet and gobble are part of the happy family too.

I heard "mouth music" as a Scots expression for the art form but the gob part I recall from some rather hazy encounters with a bunch of Dubliners in a Manchester pub, before there were any Irish pubs around. Mercifully, pre breathalyser, too.

As an International Woman, I have always enjoyed the flowers and drinks given to me - especially in Poland. Women of my generation like being recognised for work outside the home.
Thoughts on goblins spouting gobbledegook?

The Celtic link would explain why the Discworld goblins always have Scottiisch accents - I had wondered about that, although it did seem right at the time, even without knowing the reason.