Now we are flabbergaſted and bored from morning to night—in the ſenate, at Cox's muſeum, at Ranelagh, and even at church.
1844. Eliakim Littell, Robert S. Littell, Making of America Project. The Living Age, Vol. 3. Littell, Son & Company. page 383.
Almost simultaneously with the good town of St. Mungo, Bonnie Dundee and her stirring neighbors set themselves to intersect their district with railroads —linking together Dundee and Newtyle—Dundee, Arbroath, and Forfar: and near the most remote of Rome's battle-fields, scitheless cars roll, rattling louder than ever the scithed chariots of Galgacus, drawn by steeds lifeless though instinct with motion, which by their puffing and snorting would flabbergast the best of his shelties, could they return to earth.
1863. Philip Gengembre Hubert. The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11. Making of America Project. page 13
"Ef you 'd heard me flabbergast the parson!" he used to say, with a jealous anxiety to keep Christ out of the visible Church, to shut his eyes to the true purity in it, to the fact that the Physician was in His hospital.
1867. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell. Cranford. B. Tauchnitz. page 248.
"It's that you've taken me all on a sudden, and I didn't think for to get married so soon — and such quick work does flabbergast a man
He is a Mark Tapley among artisans, coming out strongest under circumstances that would simply flabbergast workmen who have allowed themselves to become blindly obedient to, and helplessly dependent upon, automatic appliances.
Well, some degree of the same pleasure may be experienced when one flabbergasts some romantic Schiller, by putting out one's tongue at him when he least expects it.
1920. H L Mencken. A Book of Burlesques. A.A. Knopf. page 205.
Judge: An officer appointed to mislead, restrain, hynotize, cajole, seduce, browbeat, flabbergast and bamboozle a jury in such a manner that it will forget all the facts and give its decision to the best lawyer.
For instance, I could offend, shock, annoy, distress and flabbergast your father utterly in five minutes, but the more I tried to offend, shock, distress or flabbergastHenry James, the more disinterestedly sympathetic he would appear.
1929. Proceedings: Vol. 55 United States Naval Institute.
HL Mencken, in a particularly savage attack on the military, says that the art of the soldier calls for the least professional competency, that the simplest problems of his ancient business flabbergast him.
Warner Brothers reasoned that if she could impress Rawson, Ann Sheridan would certainly flabbergast the ordinary public and the effort to turn her into the American Oomph Girl got under way.
1946. Philippine Author. Leopoldo Y. Yabes (editor). Philippine Short Stories, 1941-1955: 1941-1949: Part 1. page 226.
We do any number of things that must annoy and flabbergast other people and we do them as if it were our duty to annoy and flabbergast others.
He [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] loved to flabbergast his associates by announcing some startling new policy without consulting any of them.
1969. Gabriel Ruhumbika. Village in Uhuru, Vol. 5. Longman's. page 40.
Unfortunately the Standard VIII Territorial Examination found it its business to flabbergast him.
1999. Nina Nikolaevna Berberova, Marian Schwartz. Cape of Storms. New Directions Publishing. page 35.
Answers like that are very Russian and flabbergast the French — but they get a big kick out of them all the same. What flabbergasts us are the streets of our shame, and we are silent.
2005. George Weigel. Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II. HarperCollins. page 123.
Father Karol Wojtyła stopped his pacing, stood at the center of the platform, and proceeded to flabbergast everyone in the room, especially Romuald Waldera,
The idea may surprise you, but I intend that it shallflabbergast the poor foolish Englishmen mured up behind those pine and redwood logs. Flabbergast 'em, I say!