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ASTONISHING
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
So surprisingly impressive as to stun or overwhelm
Example:
the figure inside the boucle dress was stupefying
Synonyms:
astonishing; astounding; staggering; stupefying
Classified under:
Similar:
impressive (making a strong or vivid impression)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Surprising greatly
Example:
the dog was capable of astonishing tricks
Synonyms:
amazing; astonishing
Classified under:
Similar:
surprising (causing surprise or wonder or amazement)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb astonish
Context examples:
Imagination can figure nothing so grand, so surprising, and so astonishing! it looked as if ten thousand flashes of lightning were darting at the same time from every quarter of the sky.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
It was astonishing what a peculiar and uncomfortable state of things was produced by the 'resting and reveling' process.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
It's astonishing how much we don’t know about drought, from how plants die to how trees remove soil moisture, making drought worse for the rest of the vegetation, says Mike Binford, a program director in NSF's Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.
(How trees affect the weather, National Science Foundation)
Dr David Meltzer, from the Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, said: A striking thing about the analysis of Spirit Cave and Lagoa Santa is their close genetic similarity which implies their ancestral population travelled through the continent at astonishing speed.
(Ancient DNA analysis unlocks secrets of Ice Age tribes in the Americas, University of Cambridge)
You speak with astonishing composure!
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
He had remained in Shropshire, lamenting the blindness of his own pride, and the blunders of his own calculations, till at once released from Louisa by the astonishing and felicitous intelligence of her engagement with Benwick.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
She preserved an equable cheerfulness in the midst of her sympathy, which was not the least astonishing part of the change that had come over her.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
“This is astonishing,” said I, as I handed back the volume.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
How Jane could bear it at all, was astonishing to Emma.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
