flabbergasted
adjective

- to be overcome with astonishment

- feeling or showing intense shock, surprise, or wonder

- feeling shocked, usually because of something you were not expecting:

The American Heritage Dictionary / Merriam-Webster / Cambridge Dictionary

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ORIGIN

This amazing word turned up first in print in 1772, in an article on new words in the Annual Register: “Now we are flabbergasted and bored from morning to night”. Presumably, someone had put together flabber and aghast to make one word.

The source of the first part is obscure. It might be linked to "flabby", suggesting that somebody is so astonished that they shake like a jelly.

The second part of the word “gast”, is probably from the Middle English word gasten, meaning to terrify, which also gave us “aghast”. “Gasten” itself comes from the old English word gast meaning spirit, which also gives us “ghastly” and “ghost”.

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FLABBERGASTING STATISTICS

The human heart beats slightly more than once every second, about 100,000 times a day, approximately 3.5 billion times in a lifetime.

Every hour, our heart pumps around 265 liters of blood. That’s 6,360 liters in a day, 2,321,400 liters per year. Compare this to the 7.3 million liters of beer consumed in 2019 at the Munich Oktoberfest.

In a 71-year lifetime, the heart pumps the equivalent of 22.5 Oktoberfests!

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FAMOUS LAST WORD

“Stopped!” – The last word before he died, of British surgeon and anatomist Joseph Henry Green (1791–1863), while feeling his own pulse.

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SYNONYMS
Confounded with surprise or wonder

addled, agape, aghast, agog, appalled, astonished, astounded, at a complete loss, awe-struck, bewildered, befuddled, bowled over, blown-away, disconcerted, discombobulated, dumbfounded, dumbstruck, FLABBERGASTED, floored, flummoxed, gobsmacked, knocked for six, pixilated, rattled, reeling, rendered,  shocked, shook up, speechless, staggered, struck dumb, stunned, stupefied, taken aback, thrown, thunderstruck, unglued

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

“I was FLABBERGASTED when I heard the election result.”

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THANKS to Andrea for suggesting today’s word.

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HERZLICHEN DANK to all readers helping me keep OWAD alive with single or monthly donations at:

https://donorbox.org/please-become-a-friend-of-owad-3

and,

Paul Smith, IBAN: DE75 7316 0000 0002 5477 40