amaze
- 1To fill someone with surprise and wonder, leaving them astonished or astounded.
The sheer scale of the canyon never fails to amaze first-time visitors.
The young pianist amazed the entire concert hall with her final piece.
Similarastonish, astound, stun, surprise, dazzle
Note
The only sense of the verb still in everyday use, and a softening of where it began: Old English āmasian meant "to confuse, astonish". In Middle English the verb appears chiefly as amased, a past participle hard to tell from the adjective, and that passive shape runs deep. The King James Bible of 1611 has "all the people were amazed". The active verb likes a large audience, as in Macaulay's career "destined to amaze Europe".
- 2To experience amazement; to be struck with astonishment and wonder at something.
The pilgrims would amaze at the relics displayed within the shrine.
Madam amaze not, ſee his Maieſtie / Returnd vvith glory from the holy land.
1593, [George Peele], The Famous Chronicle of King Edward the FirstNote
The one who wonders stands as subject here, with no object. "Madam amaze not", in George Peele's The Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First (1593), means "do not be astonished"; modern English says be amazed instead. Bayard Taylor's 1871 translation of Goethe's Faust still reaches for it in "Eye is blinded, ear amazes". There the archaic form earns its place by rhyming with trumpet-blazes.
- 3A state of overwhelming surprise and wonder; an instance of such a feeling.
The children stared in silent amaze at the towering display of fireworks.
She took the proffered cheque and stared at it with puzzled amaze, dazed by her own behaviour.
1985, Lawrence Durrell, “Quinx”Note
A noun that lives almost entirely inside one phrase: in amaze, often all in amaze. Spenser's knight starts up "all in amaze", and Richardson's Pamela is "all in Amaze" and must sit down. Rider Haggard's travelers in She still "stood in amaze" in 1887. Outside poetry the word reads as archaic, and amazement does the ordinary work. Shakespeare could even make it plural, as amazes.
- 4To stun or stupefy someone, leaving them dazed and unable to act.
Note
Here the blow lands on the will rather than the imagination. When Goldsmith writes in 1769 of Pompey "totally amazed by this first blow", he means a commander knocked senseless by defeat. Instead of rallying his fleeing troops, Pompey simply returns to camp. In older prose, read amazed this way whenever the person then does nothing; the modern "astonish" sense would make such passages oddly cheerful.
- 5To bewilder or perplex someone (or oneself), throwing the mind into confusion.
The many musits thought the which he goes / Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.
1593, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonis[T]heir [flies'] breeding is ſo various and vvonderful, that I might eaſily amaze my ſelf, and tire you in a relation of them.
1653, Iz[aak] Wa[lton], The Compleat Angler or The Contemplative Man’s RecreationNote
Closest of all to the Old English "confuse": here the mind loses its way. Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis makes the image explicit, with tracks "like a labyrinth to amaze his foes". The sense could also turn back on the speaker. Izaak Walton fears he "might easily amaze myself" cataloguing how flies breed, a reflexive use worth recognizing when it turns up in older prose.
- 6A stupefied, bewildered state of mind; a particular instance of such dazed confusion.
The survivors wandered in amaze through the smoking ruins of the town.
A sudden amaze seized him, and his thoughts scattered beyond recall.
Similaramazement
Note
A clinical shade of the noun, closer to dizziness than to any emotion. Gervase Markham's Markhams Maister-peece (1610) lists "headache, migraine, dizziness, and amazes" among a horse's diseases of the head. The plural treats each bout of stupor as a symptom. Read this way, the noun pairs with the "stun" verb: it names a dazed condition, not a feeling.
- 7To fill someone with panic; to terrify or strike with sudden dread.
Note
Here the verb means fright rather than wonder, a use now obsolete. Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) has fear amazing those who must speak before great personages, and Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler (1653) warns that any shadow amazes the fish. Today's reader will hear the everyday "astonish" sense, so keep this one for poetic or period writing that makes the dread plain.
- 8A state of fear or terror; dread that overcomes the mind.
The camp was thrown into amaze by the sudden night attack.
An amaze spread through the ranks as the enemy advanced.
Similaramazement
Note
The phrase is the same as for the "wonder" noun, but the meaning is darker: to be in amaze can mean to be terrified. Only the surrounding action tells which. In Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield the company is "in amaze" while a lady swoons. In Tolkien's Silmarillion, all who see the onset "fled in amaze". Fleeing is the giveaway, and amazement once carried this fearful sense too.
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Origin
The verb derives from Middle English amasen ("to bewilder, perplex"), from Old English amasian ("to confuse, astonish"), formed from a perfective prefix plus a root meaning to confound or confuse, possibly ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to beckon, signal." The noun comes from the verb.