astoundingness

Klauser defended himself in but a jumbled way. He could plead only the comparative astoundingness of the fact that Rodman Harvey should have been found at his place of business at that hour.

1883, William Henry Bishop, chapter 2, in The House of a Merchant Prince, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, page 23

1938, Leonard Feeney, Elizabeth Seton: An American Woman, New York: America Press, “Emmitsburg,” p. 213, In March a most astounding postulant arrived (for even among nuns there can be degrees of astoundingness), a young girl named Elizabeth Boyle, who, though of an Irish name, was of an English family and was a convert from Episcopalianism.