| / English Dictionary |
APPALLING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
An experience that appalls
Example:
is it better to view the appalling or merely hear of it?
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("appalling" is a kind of...):
experience (an event as apprehended)
II. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Causing consternation
Example:
appalling conditions
Synonyms:
appalling; dismaying
Classified under:
Similar:
alarming (frightening because of an awareness of danger)
III. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb appall
Context examples:
I still hated and feared the thought of the brute that slept within me, and I had not of course forgotten the appalling dangers of the day before; but I was once more at home, in my own house and close to my drugs; and gratitude for my escape shone so strong in my soul that it almost rivalled the brightness of hope.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
I feared, oh so much, that the appalling nature of our danger was overcoming him when I saw his hand stretch out; but it was life to me to feel its touch—so strong, so self-reliant, so resolute.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
Again I reflected: I scarcely knew what school was: Bessie sometimes spoke of it as a place where young ladies sat in the stocks, wore backboards, and were expected to be exceedingly genteel and precise: John Reed hated his school, and abused his master; but John Reed's tastes were no rule for mine, and if Bessie's accounts of school-discipline (gathered from the young ladies of a family where she had lived before coming to Gateshead) were somewhat appalling, her details of certain accomplishments attained by these same young ladies were, I thought, equally attractive.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Mary Kingsley insisted on lending her her watch till recess, and Jenny Snow, a satirical young lady, who had basely twitted Amy upon her limeless state, promptly buried the hatchet and offered to furnish answers to certain appalling sums.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
The shock of such an event happening so suddenly, and happening to one with whom I had been in any respect at variance—the appalling vacancy in the room he had occupied so lately, where his chair and table seemed to wait for him, and his handwriting of yesterday was like a ghost—the indefinable impossibility of separating him from the place, and feeling, when the door opened, as if he might come in—the lazy hush and rest there was in the office, and the insatiable relish with which our people talked about it, and other people came in and out all day, and gorged themselves with the subject—this is easily intelligible to anyone.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Julia's looks were an evidence of the fact that made it indisputable; and after the first starts and exclamations, not a word was spoken for half a minute: each with an altered countenance was looking at some other, and almost each was feeling it a stroke the most unwelcome, most ill-timed, most appalling!
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
I thought of Switzerland; it was far different from this desolate and appalling landscape.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
The attendant tells me that his screams whilst in the paroxysm were really appalling; I found my hands full when I got in, attending to some of the other patients who were frightened by him.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
Every appearance it had then presented, bore the expression of being swelled; and the height to which the breakers rose, and, looking over one another, bore one another down, and rolled in, in interminable hosts, was most appalling.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
There is something terribly appalling in our situation, yet my courage and hopes do not desert me.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
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