Important news for lovers of distinctly Irish swear words. The word 'gobshite' made its maiden appearance in the world's most important newspaper today. According to the Twitter bot New New York Times, which tracks the words used for the very first time in the NYT, gobshite was printed for the very first time today.
gobshite
— New New York Times (@NYT_first_said) June 23, 2020
As it happened, it was Roddy Doyle smuggled the word in, via an excerpt from his short story 'Love'. Here's how it was used:
—How come?
—I got to meet the maths teacher, he said. —A gobshite, by the way. But I was outside his door. I just happened to be there.
—And she walked in while you were waiting.
In terms of high-profile Irish swearing, this is up there with Johnny Glynn swearing to Joanne Cantwell in a post-match interview on RTÉ Now that gobshite has made it big, we wonder how we can sneak in other quintessentially Irish swearwords like arsebandit into the Grey Lady.
