Astonish
verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 To surprise greatly.
""I have no right to give my opinion," said Wickham, "as to his being agreeable or otherwise. I am not qualified to form one. I have known him too long and too well to be a fair judge. It is impossible for me to be impartial. But I believe your opinion of him would in general astonish — and perhaps you would not express it quite so strongly anywhere else. Here you are in your own family.""
- 2 affect with wonder wordnet
Example
More examples"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
Etymology
Probably an alteration (due to words ending in -ish: abolish, banish, cherish, establish, furnish, etc.) of earlier astony, astone, astun (“to astonish, stun”), from Middle English astoneyen, astonen (“to stun, astonish”), variant of stonen, stoneyen (“to stun, astonish”) prefixed with a-. However, compare Old French estonir, a rare variant of estoner (“to stun, astonish”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.