different between flabbergasted vs flabbergaster

English

Alternative forms

• flabagasted
• flambergasted

Etymology

Past tense of flabbergast.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?flæb??æst?d/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?flæb???æst?d/

Adjective

flabbergasted (comparative more flabbergasted, superlative most flabbergasted)

1. Appalled, annoyed, exhausted or disgusted.
   • 1952. Agnes Morley Cleaveland. Satan's Paradise: from Lucien Maxwell to Fred Lambert. Houghton-Mifflin.

     Maxwell made a lunge at his flabbergasted guest, who ducked just in time to escape the great hands reaching for him.

   • 2008. Dutch Sheets. Watchman Prayer: Keeping the Enemy Out While Protecting Your Family, Home. Gospel Light. page 57.

     From behind her paper, she was flabbergasted to see a neatly dressed man helping himself to her cookies.

2. (euphemistic, rare) Damned.

Synonyms

See Thesaurus:astonished

Translations

Verb

flabbergasted

1. simple past tense and past participle of flabbergast

References

Anagrams

• gabberflasted

English

Etymology

flabbergast +? -er

Noun

flabbergaster (plural flabbergasters)

1. A person, thing, fact or event that is flabbergasting, or that causes extreme shock.
   • 1917, Edward Livermore Burlingame, Robert Bridges, Alfred Dashiell, Scribner's Magazine (volume 61, page 143)

     Nothing on earth so delights the Mexican heart as a real flabbergaster of a funeral.

   • 2005, Jonathan Carroll, Outside the Dog Museum (Macmillan, page 197)

     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.

2. A state of surprise or fear.

Verb

flabbergaster (third-person singular simple present flabbergasters, present participle flabbergastering, simple past and past participle flabbergastered)

1. (archaic) To perplex or amaze; to shock or frighten
   • 1888, Robert Smith Surtees, Hillingdon Hall, or, The cockney squire: a tale of country life (John C. Nimmo, page 155)

     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!

References