Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Causing great astonishment, amazement, or dismay; overwhelming: a staggering achievement; a staggering defeat.
Wiktionary
- v. present participle of stagger.
- adj. Incredible, overwhelming, amazing.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. so surprisingly impressive as to stun or overwhelm
Examples
“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".”
The Guardian: Mother-in-law's withering email to bride-to-be goes viral
“The lawmakers say the coalition transferred what it calls a staggering sum of money to the Iraqis with no rules or guidelines for oversight.”
“I've been using the word 'staggering,' and the phrase, 'you can't make this up.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“And all without Bynum, and with Kobe staggering from the flu.”
“I have read your works, and they contain staggering and startling imagination.”
“He succeeded only in staggering Rivera, but, in the ensuing moment of defenseless helplessness, he smashed him with another blow through the ropes.”
“It looks to me as if our democracy is already staggering from the ignorant blasts of tea party rhetoric.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘staggering’.
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January 2012
bloviate, pastiche, apparat, facile, paroxysm, pique, bedfellow, pedigree, tutelage, protege, protégé, retroactive and 196 more...
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All Tuckered Out
Fun ways to say you're tired
exhausted, pooped, beat, sleepy, dog tired, slumbrous, bone weary, dopey, exhausticated, staggering, fatigated, fatigue and 4 more...
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♥
ambrosia, inamorata, gossamer, lily-white, hummingbird, roucoulement, poppy, daisy, calypso, lunula, lamb, dove and 1526 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, S
scrunch, solace, sabotage, saccade, sacerdotal, sacrilegious, sacristy, snappy, skew, steadfast, scowl, scorch and 781 more...
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amy's GRE 2012
gimmicks, kowtow, unpretentious, skeptical, cynical, somber, prevaricate, equivocate, requisite, embellish, impregnable, procrastinate and 307 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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complicated words
mire, mirth, misapplication, reluctant, aghast, surreptitiously, wares, abashed, leap, dash, peer, tangle and 107 more...
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_mark's list
Words I like!
( personal list, favorite words, randomness )psy, nanobot, success, smack, vibration, microcosmic, springgraph, marksmanship, estranged, homoerotic, flex, fiasco and 1692 more...
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the essentials.
all those basic, beautiful words for a basic, beautiful life.
delicate, sorrow, orrery, kaleidescope, staggering, damn, catastrophe, cathedral, basilica, irenic, felicity, raconteur and 29 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for staggering.
bilby "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. Sep 18, 2009
bilby There are 11 comments/citations on Wordie that include staggering although not all are using it in the hyperbolic sense noted. Mar 1, 2009
sionnach 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. Feb 28, 2009