Have you ever been watching a movie or a net-streaming series, and a character uses such a visceral word it stops you cold?
This happened to me last weekend, and I immediately reached for my phone to jot it down. The word painted the perfect mental image. Isn’t that what we all strive for?
The word is mantled or mantling, used as a verb. Have you heard or read this word in a novel? I had not. And I love new-to-me words, especially verbs.
Dictionary defines mantle as:
- Literary
Clothe in or as if in a mantle; cloak or envelop.
- Archaic
(of blood) suffuse (the face).
“A warm pink mounted to the girl’s cheeks and mantled her brow.”
- Archaic
(of the face) glow with a blush.
“Her rich face mantling with emotion.”
- Archaic
(of a liquid) become covered with a head or froth
“The poison mantled in the bowl.”
- (of a bird of prey on the ground or on a perch) spread the wings and tail to cover captured prey.
“The female Goshawk is feeding while mantling with spread wings over her prey.”
Origin
Latin Old English Old French Modern
mantellum –> mentel –> mantel –> mantle
As an unwritten “rule” it’s often best to steer clear of archaic usages unless we’re writing in that time period, but all the above definitions really work for me.
The context in which I heard mantled was in a comedy.
How can I say this without offending anyone? An obese (curvy? full-figured?) woman fell on top of this peanut of a man. When they landed on the ground, only his hands and feet protruded from beneath her.
One of the onlookers said, “Look how she mantled that poor guy.”
I died, laughing! Which made the verb even more memorable.
While I was in Dictionary.com, I looked up one of my favorite words: gobsmacked. Again, it paints the perfect mental image. Doesn’t it?
Definition
- Utterly astounded; astonished
“I was truly gobsmacked by their decision.”
Gobsmacked is an adjective that means completely shocked. The word gobsmacked comes from England and Scotland, where it is used as slang to express extreme shock. Gobsmacked is often used by people from these areas.
Example: She was absolutely gobsmacked when she discovered a large pile of money under the floorboards.
Where does gobsmacked come from?
Based on the parts of the word, feeling gobsmacked is equivalent to feeling like you’ve been (figuratively) hit in the mouth: gob is slang for “mouth” and smack is a verb that means “to hit.”
The suffix -ed, which indicates past tense, turns the word into an adjective. The first records of its use come from around the mid-1930s. It’s now a common slang term in the UK and is also used somewhat commonly in the US and other English-speaking areas.
Though gobsmacked means “astounded” or “astonished” to the point of being speechless, you don’t say it any time you want to mean “shocked.” It’s use calls attention to the fact that you were not expecting what happened — a lot like flabbergasted.
For example, someone might say they were gobsmacked when they won the lottery, or when they found out something costs much more than they thought, or when a long-lost friend surprised them with an unexpected visit.
When was the last time you were gobsmacked?
Have you used the word mantled in your writing? Please give us the context.
Much of my reading has been by British authors (PG Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, Tolkien, CS Lewis, Iain Pears, Colin Dexter, usw. I’ve subscribed to various UK publications, too–Autocar, Punch, etc.–over the years. Thus gobsmacked is no stranger, along with several dozen other expressions not in daily use here. I shan’t be employing mantle soon, if ever.