flabbergastation

English

Etymology

flabbergast +‎ -ation

Noun

flabbergastation (uncountable)

  1. (colloquial) Bewildered shock or surprise; the state or condition of being flabbergasted.[1]
    • 1856, Punch, Vol. 31‎, The Punch Office, page 240:
      We scarcely remember to have ever seen any respectable party in a greater state of flabbergastation than the writer of some observations in Mb. Cobden's Russo-Manchesterian organ, the Morning Star, of Thursday, December the fourth.
    • 1832-1837, Honoré de Balzac, Droll Stories: Volume 2, Kessinger Publishing, page 65:
      Upon a sign, she takes ahold of two cords of black silk, to which were attached loops, through which she passes her arms, and in the twinkling of an eye is translated by two pulleys from her bed through the ceiling into the room above, and the trap closing as it has opened, left the old duenna in a state of great flabbergastation, when, turning her head, she neither saw robe nor woman, and perceived that the women had been robbed.
    • 1918, Shaw Desmond, The Soul of Denmark, C. Scribner's Sons, page 96:
      I can recall my flabbergastation when in the house of a Jutlander of the middle class I heard him holding fluent converse with his children in some heathen dialect...
    • 1944, Field and Stream: Volume 49, CBS Publications, page 90:
      Winchester .22 Automatic which we saw demonstrated (to our utter flabbergastation) in a local hardware store by a visiting Winchester representative.
    • 1998, Daniel Quinn, Tom Whalen, Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife: On the Other Side Known Commonly as "The Little Book", Random House Digital:
      Ignoring the other's utter flabbergastation, Matthews turned and graciously introduced him to me.
  2. (archaic, colloquial, humorous) The act of confounding or bewildering.[2]

References
  1. Joseph Wright (Ed.), editor (1900), The English Dialect Dictionary, Being the Complete Vocabulary of All Dialect‎, H. Frowde, page 376
  2. William Dwight Whitney and Benjamin Eli Smith (Eds.), editor (1897), The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia: Dictionary‎, Century, page 2245
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