How to use shocking in a sentence
40 example sentences · adjective, noun
Shocking means inspiring shock; startling. Example: “What a shocking calamity!”
Examples of shocking by meaning
adjectiveExtremely bad.
- What a shocking calamity!
More sentences with shocking
- His eyes grew as large as dinnerplates when he heard the shocking news.From the entry dinnerplate
- Some of these Southeastern rainstorms are shocking to folks who didn't grow up here.From the entry southeastern
- The sheer graphicness of the violence is shocking.From the entry graphicness
- The shocking thing about Christopher’s disappearance is that he vanished within sight of his co-workers.2026 August 23, Aniket Chaughule, “Christopher Thompkins Vanished From a Georgia Survey Site in 2002. His Coworkers Were Only 50 Feet…. From the entry leave behind
- The off-the-charts sea temperatures and Antarctic sea ice loss were seen as the most shocking.2023 August 28, Damian Carrington, Nina Lakhani, Oliver Milman, Adam Morton, Ajit Niranjan, “‘Off-the-charts records’: has humanity…. From the entry off-the-charts
- It’s shocking that two years after the ‘Pestminster’ scandal, female MPs are fleeing politics.2019 31 October, Catherine Mayer, “It’s shocking that two years after the ‘Pestminster’ scandal, female MPs are fleeing politics”, in The…. From the entry Pestminster
- It is fully as shocking as it is meant to be.2018 December 9, Laura Cumming, “Haroon Mirza: reality is somehow what we expect it to be – review”, in The Observer, London: Guardian…. From the entry fully
- We learned that a shocking 98% of GTR respondents to a recent survey had experienced discrimination.2016 October 12, Deidre Brock, Hansard, volume 615, Commons Chamber. From the entry GTR
- With my diagnosed mental illness I find it shocking that I should have had to endure this.2011, Giorgio Pin, An Interesting Life, page 75. From the entry do someone's head in
- The last sentence is so shocking, I have to read it again.2010 October 30, Simon Hattenstone, The Guardian. From the entry again
- Barry sounded lighter, his spirits lifting slightly from the shell shocking humiliation and helplessness he'd been feeling.2010, John E. Shephard, Jr, Cottage Lake Soliloquy, page 10. From the entry shell shock
- This had another odor new to Tammy, who found her attraction to it quite shocking.2000 March 20, Chris Deneen, “Rescue Rangers:Forget Chip (M/M F/f incest toon anal toy)”, in alt.sex.stories (Usenet). From the entry tailhole
- One of the most shocking aspects of the Chinese occupation is the forced sterilization of Tibetan women.1999, Art Perry, The Tibetans, Viking Studio, →ISBN, pages 23–24. From the entry sterilization
- Once again, what followed was a shocking comeupance for the right-wing press.1990, George Sirgiovanni, An Undercurrent of Suspicion: Anti-communism in America During World War II, page 131. From the entry comeupance
- Why did the eminent Italian writer Primo Levi die in the shocking way he did?1988 December 19, William Styron, “Why Primo Levi Need Not Have Died”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 29 Aug…. From the entry eminent
- The Aztec artists strove with rare consistency to depict the gods as shocking.1979, Burr Cartwright Brundage, “The Quality of the Numinous”, in The Fifth Sun: Aztec Gods, Aztec World (Texas Pan American Series), 1st…. From the entry familial
- I know it's shocking blasphemy to say so, but then it's different here, you see.1923, Walter de la Mare, Seaton's Aunt. From the entry ruminatingly
- He had forgotten, in the blindness of his love, how shocking the misalliance would be.1911 October 26, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson, or, An Oxford Love Story, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company…. From the entry misalliance
- The news of her death is shocking, in part, because she was in the midst of a late-career renaissance.2026 January 30, Judy Berman, “Catherine O’Hara Portrayed the Vain and Delusional With a Radical Lack of Vanity”, in TIME, archived from…. From the entry renaissance
- The novelty of women’s public protest shifted from a shocking sight of women filling the streets to a body count.2022 January 10, Elisabeth Armstrong, “Here and There: A Story of Women’s Internationalism, 1948-1953”, in Carolien Stolte, Su Lin Lewis…. From the entry body count
- “This case of police torture and murder is shocking.2021 August 25, Tassanee Vejpongsa, “Video sparks arrest of Thai police in drug suspect's death”, in The Washington Post, retrieved 26 Aug…. From the entry unturned
- If we don’t use shocking language to describe a shocking circumstance, can we truly recognize what is happening?2019 July 26, David J. Ulin, “Op-Ed: I’m Jewish and I don’t say this lightly: ‘Never again’ is right now in America”, in LA Times. From the entry euphemism
- Shocking as this may sound, I had recognized Insurgents before.2018 December 9, Katherine Hurlin, The Insurgents: Plotting to Overthrow the Regent, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 10. From the entry insurge
- A classic strategy for achieving this is to proclaim ideas so shocking and subversive that anything less radical suddenly sounds sensible.2017, Elizabeth Manton, transl., “epilogue”, in Utopia for Realists, Kindle edition, Bloomsbury Publishing, translation of Gratis geld…. From the entry Overton window
- Reports like this, which have also appeared in the past, are shocking and have caused me to reflect deeply.2012 [2000 February 1], Jiang Zemin, “Correctly Guide the Healthy Growth of Young People”, in Selected Works of Jiang Zemin, volume II…. From the entry Anyang
- All the more shocking is Layton’s hairdo from years back, a wild mass of frizz atop his disturbingly top-hatless head.2012 September, Phil Theobald, “How to Become a Gentleman”, in Chris Slate, editor, Nintendo Power, number 282, San Francisco, Calif.…. From the entry top-hatless
- The second problem is the economy, the shocking state of which has forced the decision to apply to the EU.2009 July 23, “All things to Althingi”, in The Economist. From the entry force
- In Exodus we undergo the first of a multitude of shocking surprises, issuing from the great surpriser, the primal shocker.2008, Daniel Berrigan, Exodus: Let My People Go, page 27. From the entry surpriser
- I darted from room to room as the see-through bagless dustbin piled high with shocking amounts of icky-poo.2007 October 7, S.S. Fair, “Vacuum Packed”, in New York Times. From the entry pile
- His latest play is so shocking that his publisher wouldn't touch it and his friends almost dumped him.2005 February 9, Lyn Gardner, “The devil inside”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 27 Apr 2023. From the entry touch
- That's why good strategists know when to stop shocking and awing: when to begin consolidating the benefits these strategies have provided.2004, John Lewis Gaddis, “The Twenty-first Century”, in Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (Joanna Jackson Goldman Memorial…. From the entry shock and awe
- It is a shocking situation when a dangerous criminal can walk free by evading recapture for a month."1994 May 14, James Cusick, “Loophole gives knifeman freedom”, in The Independent, UK, retrieved 18 Jul 2014. From the entry the law is an ass
- I would suspect, however, that a Confucian leadership would find her unfiliality even more shocking than this unwifeliness.1987, Modern Chinese Literature, page 151. From the entry unwifeliness
- The bride was a shocking housekeeper and dragged round all day in boudoir cap, frowsy negligee and mules—slip, slop, slip, slop.1944, Emily Carr, “First Tenant”, in The House of All Sorts. From the entry mule
- Professor Sherman, meditating upon the shocking state of American Letters, becomes a bespectacled, be-toga-ed minister, palms joined in ecclesiastical anxiety.1923 June 9, “Literary Lights—and Shades”, in Haldeman-Julius Weekly, number 1436, Girard, Kan., page 2. From the entry be-togaed
- It was General du Pont's 'forty-five' which bellowed and thundered and echoed through Fifth avenue, scaring horses and shell shocking pedestrians.1919, Bulletin of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, numbers 148-152, page xx. From the entry shell shock
- So when Alabama safety Jordan Battle revealed his head coach has an affinity for "deez nuts" jokes, it was both shocking and hilarious.2021 September 21, “Mac Jones confirms Nick Saban's love for 'deez' jokes”, in NBC Sports. From the entry deez nuts
- It was one of the most shocking WWE title matches ever witnessed, and effectively a 20-minute squash match as Brock Lesnar "conquered" his opponent.Orr, James (18 August 2014), “WWE SummerSlam 2014: How Twitter reacted to John Cena vs Brock Lesnar”, in (Please provide the book title or…. From the entry squash
- This latest Internet meme is shocking.2012 March 28, Trey Parker, “Faith Hilling”, in South Park, season 16, episode 3, spoken by Reporter. From the entry meme
Meaning of shocking
- adjective Inspiring shock; startling.
- adjective Unusually obscene or lewd.
- adjective Extremely bad.
Questions about shocking in a sentence
- How do you use shocking in a sentence?
- Shocking is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “What a shocking calamity!”
- What is a short sentence with shocking?
- “What a shocking calamity!”
- What does shocking mean?
- Shocking means inspiring shock; startling.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shocking (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “How to use shocking in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/shocking. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
