flabbergaster

plural flabbergasters

1. 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

   1 more example

   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

2. A state of surprise or fear.

present singular third person flabbergasters · participle present flabbergastering · participle past flabbergastered · past flabbergastered

1. archaicTo perplex or amaze; to shock or frighten

   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

   1 more example

   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