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On the fourth round of edits for my upcoming novel, I wanted to add a sentence where my protagonist expresses extreme shock at someone else's use of language:
I couldn't get a word in through all my surprise at her choice of language.
Considering "surprise" to be far too light I took a trip to my handy thesaurus and found one of my favorite words listed as a synonym: "flabbergast." But when I tried to form a "state of being" noun form by adding "-ness" to the past participle form, MS Word flagged it. Apparently, "flabbergastedness" isn't in its dictionary, and searches failed to turn up any other resource (other than Urban Dictionary) that listed the word.
So what is the proper word here? I can think of three possibilities, but they all seem so artificial:
- Flabbergastment
- Flabbergastity
- Flabbergastion
Any ideas?
Hi Pab, and welcome to the forum!
First, don't let MS Word tell you what's valid or not. It often flags perfectly legitimate words. Some MSW versions are better than others. Ultimately, you need to refer to a "real" dictionary to know for sure.
To answer your question, I believe the word you're looking for is flabbergastation. (Spell check just flagged that, so I told it to add it to my dictionary.)
Here's one link to an online source: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Flabbergastation
Thanks Emmett. As I've said many times, I learn new words on this forum all the time. If the OED lists flabbergast as a noun, I'd say go with Pab. Simpler is always better, and truth be told, I was surprised to find flabbergastation online. Pab, you might have your readers scrambling for a dictionary, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Heimhenge, you might want to reconsider your thanks after you read this post, but I still stand by my editing of Pab's sentence.
I re-read the OED entries and flabbergastation was there too with the right definition for the word. Flabbergast as a noun means bombast, but that meaning is noted as rare. Since it is so rare, I would expect that a modern reader would assume flabbergast to have the meaning Pab intends.
I am sorry if some readers think this is too creative use of the language but its users have been verbing nouns and nouning verbs for a long time. I still like its use in Pab's sentence.
Emmett
I agree with Heimhenge about MS Spell Check; it's a fine tool and occasionally it knows how to spell words I miss, but I rarely hesitate to override its judgement when it says I've invented a word it never heard of, or when it's heard of the word but disagrees with my spelling.
I've never tried for the noun form of "flabbergasted", myself, but oddly enough when I thought about it and before I read the responses, I decided I'd plump for "flabbergast" as the noun as well as the verb. Guess I can't be wrong all the time.
I don't think there's anything actually wrong with "flabbergastation", but I have Pam's instinctive objection to treating it as though the verb were "flabbergastate". I strongly suspect that's just a personal preference, though.
On a more serious note, have you considered other thesaurus entries for surprise? Depending on the nuance of the surprise and flabbergastation, you could employ, for example, astonishment, amazement, incredulity, shock, wonderment, discombobulation, perplexity, befuddlement, stupefaction, etc.
There is also a noun form of nonplus -- nonplus.
And why are we tied to a noun here?
I couldn't get a word in, flabbergasted at her choice of language.
Of course I prefer to go the extra mile:
I couldn't voice a sound, flabbergasted at her choice of words and flummoxed by her grammar.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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