Word.ws English Dictionary

flabbergastation

flabbergastation noun: bewildered shock or surprise; the state or condition of being flabbergasted.

Noun

flabbergastation (uncountable)

  1. (colloquial) Bewildered shock or surprise; the state or condition of being flabbergasted.
    • 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.1856, Punch, Vol. 31, The Punch Office, page 240
    • 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...1832-1837, Honoré de Balzac, Droll Stories: Volume 2, Kessinger Publishing, page 65
  2. (archaic, colloquial, humorous) The act of confounding or bewildering.

Examples of flabbergastation in a sentence

  • 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...1918, Shaw Desmond, The Soul of Denmark, C. Scribner's Sons, page 96:
  • Winchester .22 Automatic which we saw demonstrated (to our utter flabbergastation) in a local hardware store by a visiting Winchester representative.1944, Field and Stream: Volume 49, CBS Publications, page 90:
  • Ignoring the other's utter flabbergastation, Matthews turned and graciously introduced him to me.1998, Daniel Quinn, Tom Whalen, Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife: On the Other Side Known Commonly as "The Little Book", Random House...

Origin of flabbergastation

From flabbergast + -ation.

Questions about flabbergastation

What does flabbergastation mean?
Flabbergastation means bewildered shock or surprise; the state or condition of being flabbergasted.
How do you use flabbergastation in a sentence?
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...
What part of speech is flabbergastation?
Flabbergastation is a noun.

Words near flabbergastation in the dictionary

  1. flabaghast
  2. flabaghasted
  3. flabaghasting
  4. flabaghasts
  5. flabbergast
  6. flabbergastation
  7. flabbergasted
  8. flabbergastedly
  9. flabbergastedness
  10. flabbergaster
  11. flabbergastered

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flabbergastation (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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