We had quite a few good suggestions today, so people can use dumbfound or they can use one of the others, which are: explore, astonishment, imagination, climate, provoke or phosphorescence…
I really like the word ‘dumbfound’ which is a mixture of dumb (not able to speak) and confound, which means to surprise or confuse someone. So it’s like you are speechless and confused. The word was invented in about 1650 (so Shakespeare would never have used the word as he died in 1616) but was hardly ever used until about 1850 – and it has been used more and more since then. The word ‘dumb’ and the word ‘confound’ are both very old words, much older than ‘dumbfound’ but they were used together until about 1650.
Dumbfound: greatly astonish or amaze…
- I was dumbfounded when I saw how difficult the test was!
- If you do a brilliant magic trick you could dumbfound your teacher 🙂