flabbergaster meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

flabbergaster

noun

Etymology From flabbergast + -er.

A person, thing, fact or event that is flabbergasting, or that causes extreme shock.

Nothing on earth so delights the Mexican heart as a real flabbergaster of a funeral.1917, Edward Livermore Burlingame, Robert Bridges, Alfred Dashiell, Scribner's Magazine, volume 61, page 143:
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.2005, Jonathan Carroll, Outside the Dog Museum, Macmillan, page 197:

A state of surprise or fear.

verb

Etymology From flabbergast + -er.

Archaic To perplex or amaze; to shock or frighten

Jack, among his friends, had raised money sufficient to fee an Old Bailey counsel, who, by blustering and cross-examination, succeeded in so flabbergastering the simple witnesses for the prosecution, that the prisoner was in a fair way of being acquitted; […]1853, John Yonge Akerman, Wiltshire Tales, page 131:
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!1888, Robert Smith Surtees, Hillingdon Hall, or, The cockney squire: a tale of country life, John C. Nimmo, page 155: