Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To fill with horror and amazement; dismay greatly.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun See
appal .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun poet. Terror; dismay.
- transitive verb obsolete To make pale; to blanch.
- transitive verb obsolete To weaken; to enfeeble; to reduce.
- transitive verb To depress or discourage with fear; to impress with fear in such a manner that the mind shrinks, or loses its firmness; to overcome with sudden terror or horror; to dismay.
- intransitive verb obsolete To grow faint; to become weak; to become dismayed or discouraged.
- intransitive verb obsolete To lose flavor or become stale.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb transitive To depress or discourage with fear; to impress with fear in such a manner that the mind shrinks, or loses its firmness; to overcome with sudden terror or horror; to dismay; as, the sight appalled the stoutest heart.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb fill with apprehension or alarm; cause to be unpleasantly surprised
- verb strike with disgust or revulsion
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Somtow himself warned that the new opera, inspired by American action movies, might "appall" some of his fellow Thais.
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Somtow himself warned that the new opera, inspired by American action movies, might "appall" some of his fellow Thais.
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This election is a perfect example of how Americans distrust and appall typical Liberal Democrat tax and spend policy!
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Under the old eyes of a principal whose narrow glance is ample to subdue but not appall, the children spill around the skinned and limbless maple as if outside the temple of a declining god of simple rituals easily met.
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Why does ignorance or rejection of evolution in the general population so amaze and appall the scientific community, when they themselves seem to have been caught by surprise by a classic instance of evolution — the development of drug resistance among pathogens?
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When human beings created an ad for a publication, they took care to avoid situations where the combination of a certain ad with a certain type of article would produce a tasteless match that would appall readers and win no business for the advertisers.
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It's no wonder that the corporate elitists who actually run the Party disgust and appall themselves whenever they have to go out and appeal to the base and deal with its leaders.
A party held together with spit, chewing gum, baling wire, and duct tape
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When they look at him, they see the Enlightenment and it appalls them in the same way that creationists appall the enlightened.
Terry Curtis Fox: Paladino, Rabbis and a New Religious Taxonomy
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It's no wonder that the corporate elitists who actually run the Party disgust and appall themselves whenever they have to go out and appeal to the base and deal with its leaders.
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When they look at him, they see the Enlightenment and it appalls them in the same way that creationists appall the enlightened.
Terry Curtis Fox: Paladino, Rabbis and a New Religious Taxonomy
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