astoundingness

astoundingness

English

Etymology

astounding +‎ -ness

Noun

astoundingness (uncountable)

1. The quality of being astounding.
   • 1883, William Henry Bishop, The House of a Merchant Prince, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, Chapter 2, p. 23,

     Klauser defended himself in but a jumbled way. He could plead only the comparative astoundingness of the fact that Rodman Harvey should have been found at his place of business at that hour.

   • 1909, Arnold Bennett, The Glimpse: An Adventure of the Soul, London: Chapman & Hall, Chapter 34, p. 277,

     The astoundingness of the episode had shaken him violently out of his groove.

   • 1938, Leonard Feeney, Elizabeth Seton: An American Woman, New York: America Press, “Emmitsburg,” p. 213,

     In March a most astounding postulant arrived (for even among nuns there can be degrees of astoundingness), a young girl named Elizabeth Boyle, who, though of an Irish name, was of an English family and was a convert from Episcopalianism.