Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Causing great astonishment, amazement, or dismay; overwhelming.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb Present participle of
stagger . - adjective
Incredible ,overwhelming ,amazing .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective so surprisingly impressive as to stun or overwhelm
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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In the email, Bourne, 60, from Dawlish, Devon, apparently rebukes Withers, 29, for her behaviour during a visit to the family in April, which she describes as "staggering in its uncouthness and lack of grace".
Mother-in-law's withering email to bride-to-be goes viral 2011
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In the email, Bourne, 60, from Dawlish, Devon, apparently rebukes Withers, 29, for her behaviour during a visit to the family in April, which she describes as "staggering in its uncouthness and lack of grace".
Mother-in-law's withering email to bride-to-be goes viral 2011
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The lawmakers say the coalition transferred what it calls a staggering sum of money to the Iraqis with no rules or guidelines for oversight.
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"I've been using the word 'staggering,' and the phrase, 'you can't make this up.'"
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Conforming to his usual clear-headed and folksy outlook, he doesn't linger too long on the monetary attractiveness of gold but rather zeroes in on its current valuation - which he calls "staggering."
The Globe and Mail - Home RSS feed DAVID BERMAN 2012
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Michael Brill looked tired last week as he ducked into his cavernous winery in eastern San Francisco to answer what he described as a staggering number of e-mail messages.
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Michael Brill looked tired last week as he ducked into his cavernous winery in eastern San Francisco to answer what he described as a staggering number of e-mail messages.
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Michael Brill looked tired last week as he ducked into his cavernous winery in eastern San Francisco to answer what he described as a staggering number of e-mail messages.
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Republicans minimized the significance of the latest cost estimate, deriding the 10-year budget savings as paltry compared with what they called the staggering scale of the government's debt.
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Michael Brill looked tired last week as he ducked into his cavernous winery in eastern San Francisco to answer what he described as a staggering number of e-mail messages.
sionnach commented on the word staggering
A FotF* e-mails:
I found myself using "staggering" to describe the beauty of SC back country in December. I've started noticing this same adjective all over the Post and at places in the NYer. Today's Post uses it at least twice on page 1. Odd how these things go. I'm sure I unconsciously picked it up back in December as the word was starting to creep into mass media and now it's an epidemic. Of staggering proportions.
*: friend o' the fox
The epidemic appears not to have reached Woidie.
March 1, 2009
bilby commented on the word staggering
There are 11 comments/citations on Wordie that include staggering although not all are using it in the hyperbolic sense noted.
March 1, 2009
bilby commented on the word staggering
"The early Republic that the most hawkish conservatives love to cite was a land whose leaders looked with suspicion on the very idea of a standing army. They would have viewed our hundreds of global garrisons, our vast network of spies, agents, Special Forces teams, surveillance operatives, interrogators, rent-a-guns, and mercenary corporations, as well as our staggering Pentagon budget and the constant future-war gaming and planning that accompanies it, with genuine horror."
- Tom Engelhardt, Is America Hooked on War?, tomdispatch.com, 17 Sep 2009.
September 18, 2009