amazement

Etymology

It is formed from English amaze + -ment.^[2][3][4][5] The verb is usually traced to Old English āmasian (“to amaze, stupefy, confound”),^[6][7][8] past participle āmasod,^[6][3] but the OED, revising the entry in 2021, takes it as probably a- plus the base of maze.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Loss of one's wits or self-possession, bewilderment: 1553, in Brende's translation of Quintus Curtius.^[2] The revised OED is well ahead of the other dictionaries here: Merriam-Webster gives 1592 and Etymonline the 1590s.^[9][3]

Semantic evolution

The first meanings were close to the bewildering sense of amaze, to stun.^[2][6] Merriam-Webster's obsolete senses run from frenzy and madness to perplexity and terror.^[9] The sense of wonder appears early in the OED (1576), although Etymonline dates it about 1600 and the Shorter Oxford to the early 17th century,^[2][3][4] and the sense of fear or panic is recorded from 1590, in Spenser's Faerie Queene.^[2] For a long time the senses ran side by side: Johnson (1755) listed confused apprehension or extreme fear, with Spenser and Hamlet as his witnesses, then extreme dejection, and only third the "height of admiration".^[10] The sense of fear is last recorded in 1759 and that of bewilderment in 1781, leaving wonder and surprise as the modern meaning.^[2]

Timeline

• 1553 – loss of self-possession, bewilderment (obsolete by 1781).^[2] Merriam-Webster dates this sense to 1592.^[9]
• 1576 – wonder, great surprise.^[2] Etymonline dates this sense to about 1600.^[3]
• 1590 – fear, panic, terror (obsolete by 1759).^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. Great wonder or astonishment: To the crowd's amazement, the old horse won the race.^[9][11][2]
2. Something that amazes.^[9]
3. (obsolete, 1553–1781) Bewilderment or perplexity.^[2][9][11]
4. (obsolete, 1590–1759) Terror or consternation.^[2][9][10]

Related words

• amaze
• maze

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
9. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins