gobemouche
Aug. 30th, 2010 07:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordgobemouche (GAWB-moosh) - n., a silly or credulous person.
One who will swallow anything you tell them, though that's not the original sense -- from French gobe-mouches meaning literally "swallows flies," someone who stands around with their mouth hanging open. Also used, it seems, in the sense of a boor, but I can't tell if that is an English or French sense of the word. First citation I can find (in an 1892 dictionary that insists that the singular form above is incorrect, and it should be gobemouches) is 1830.
---L.
One who will swallow anything you tell them, though that's not the original sense -- from French gobe-mouches meaning literally "swallows flies," someone who stands around with their mouth hanging open. Also used, it seems, in the sense of a boor, but I can't tell if that is an English or French sense of the word. First citation I can find (in an 1892 dictionary that insists that the singular form above is incorrect, and it should be gobemouches) is 1830.
---L.
