"smashing" < Gaelic??

[Lynne Murphy]

According to Partridge, "smashing" was "phenomenally popular" in the RAF in
WW2, caught on among civilians post 1945, and after ca. 1957 "it began to
lose popularity, except among school-children, teenagers, lower middle
class.  This sense may have originated in boxing: cf. C.19 synon.
_crushing_, _smacking_, and _stunning_.

Incidentally (and unrelated), the "Nothing personal" column on Salon has
been word-watching for the Atlantic crossing of "gobsmacked", noting a
couple of times where British people have been quoted using the term in the
American press (and the confusion it causes).  Is "gobsmacked" making its
way into American English at all?  (It means "astonished; rendered
speechless".)

Lynne

Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320
> From:         Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM
> Date:         Fri, 17 Mar 2000 12:03:33 -0500
> Subject:      "smashing" < Gaelic??
> To:           ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Reply-To:     American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>
> Here's a bit of correspondence I had:
>
> >>>>>
> On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Aria wrote:
>
> #I know the phenomenon, physicist though I am I do find some linguistics
> #fascinating.
> #For example, did you know the exclamation 'Smashing!' Actually comes from
> #Gaelic?
> #'S math sin' (That is good.)
>
> I hadn't heard it. It's interesting, and a good story... which doesn't
> make it true. Lots of really good (in that sense) etymologies are just a
> load of hokum. There's a discussion now on ADS-L, the American Dialect
> Soc'y list, about "posh", which is usually and wrongly attributed to an
> acronym for "Port Out, Starboard Home" for round trips from Britain to the
> eastern jewels in the crown of the empire. I'll ask about this one.
> <<<<<
>
> Info, anyone?
>
>    Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist and Manager of Acoustic Data
>           Mark_Mandel at dragonsys.com : Dragon Systems, Inc.
>  320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02460, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
>