flabbergaster

English

Etymology

flabbergast + -er

Noun

flabbergaster (plural flabbergasters)

  1. A person, thing, fact or event that is flabbergasting, or that causes extreme shock.
    • 1917, Edward Livermore Burlingame, Robert Bridges, Alfred Dashiell, Scribner's Magazine (volume 61, page 143)
      Nothing on earth so delights the Mexican heart as a real flabbergaster of a funeral.
    • 2005, Jonathan Carroll, Outside the Dog Museum (Macmillan, page 197)
      This first flabbergaster was that the new Sultan had decided he wanted at least a third of the construction crew to be made up of Saruvian workers, even though the museum would be built in Austria.
  2. A state of surprise or fear.[1]

Verb

flabbergaster (third-person singular simple present flabbergasters, present participle flabbergastering, simple past and past participle flabbergastered)

  1. (archaic) To perplex or amaze; to shock or frighten[2]
    • 1888, Robert Smith Surtees, Hillingdon Hall, or, The cockney squire: a tale of country life (John C. Nimmo, page 155)
      But I've got an invention in my 'ead — at all events, the notion of an invention, that I ventures to say will work wonders in the terrestrial globe — flabbergaster the world!

References

  1. Joseph Wright (Ed.), editor (1900) The English Dialect Dictionary, Being the Complete Vocabulary of All Dialect, H. Frowde, page 376
  2. Joseph Wright (Ed.), editor (1900) The English Dialect Dictionary, Being the Complete Vocabulary of All Dialect, H. Frowde, page 376
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