Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The emotion aroused by something awe-inspiring, astounding, or surprising.
  • noun The quality that arouses such emotion.
  • noun One that arouses awe, astonishment, surprise, or admiration; a marvel.
  • noun A monumental human creation regarded with awe, especially one of seven monuments of the ancient world that appeared on various lists of late antiquity.
  • noun An extraordinary or remarkable act or achievement.
  • noun An event inexplicable by the laws of nature; a miracle.
  • intransitive verb To have a feeling of awe, astonishment, surprise, or admiration.
  • intransitive verb To be filled with curiosity or doubt.
  • intransitive verb To feel curiosity or be in doubt about.
  • adjective Remarkable or extraordinary, especially in being beneficial.
  • idiom (do wonders) To have a beneficial effect.
  • idiom (for a wonder) As a cause for surprise; surprisingly.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To be affected with wonder or surprise; marvel; be amazed: formerly with a reflexive dative.
  • To look with or feel admiration.
  • To entertain some doubt or curiosity in reference to some matter; speculate expectantly; be in a state of expectation mingled with doubt and slight anxiety or wistfulness: as, I wonder whether we shall reach the place in time: hence, I wonder is often equivalent to ‘I should like to know.’
  • To be curious about; wish to know; speculate in regard to: as, I wonder where John has gone.
  • To surprise; amaze.
  • Wonderful.
  • noun A strange tiling; a cause of surprise, astonishment, or admiration; in a restricted sense, a miracle; a marvel, prodigy, or portent.
  • noun That emotion which is excited by novelty, or the presentation to the sight or mind of something new, unusual, strange, great, extraordinary, not well understood, or that arrests the attention by its novelty, grandeur, or inexplicitbleness.
  • noun A cruller.
  • noun =Syn.1. Sign, marvel, phenomenon, spectacle, rarity.
  • noun Surprise, bewilderment. See def. 2.
  • Wonderfully; exceedingly; very.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun That emotion which is excited by novelty, or the presentation to the sight or mind of something new, unusual, strange, great, extraordinary, or not well understood; surprise; astonishment; admiration; amazement.
  • noun A cause of wonder; that which excites surprise; a strange thing; a prodigy; a miracle.
  • noun See in the Dictionary of Noted Names in Fiction.
  • adjective obsolete Wonderful.
  • adverb obsolete Wonderfully.
  • intransitive verb To be affected with surprise or admiration; to be struck with astonishment; to be amazed; to marvel.
  • intransitive verb To feel doubt and curiosity; to wait with uncertain expectation; to query in the mind.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Something that causes amazement or awe, a marvel.
  • noun Something astonishing and seemingly inexplicable.
  • noun Someone very talented at something, a genius.
  • noun The sense or emotion which can be inspired by something curious or unknown.
  • noun UK, informal A mental pondering, a thought.
  • verb To ponder about something.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the feeling aroused by something strange and surprising
  • verb be amazed at
  • verb place in doubt or express doubtful speculation
  • verb have a wish or desire to know something
  • noun a state in which you want to learn more about something
  • noun something that causes feelings of wonder

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English wundor.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English wonder, wunder, from Old English wundor ("wonder, miracle, marvel, portent, horror; wondrous thing, monster"), from Proto-Germanic *wundran (“miracle, wonder”), from Proto-Indo-European *wen- (“to wish for, desire, strive for, win, love”). Cognate with Scots wunner ("wonder"), West Frisian wonder, wûnder ("wonder, miracle"), Dutch wonder ("miracle, wonder"), Low German wunner, wunder ("wonder"), German Wunder ("miracle, wonder"), Swedish under ("wonder, miracle"), Icelandic undur ("wonder"). Possible extra-Germanic cognate include Albanian ëndërr ("dream, wonder") geg var. andër, ondër.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English wundrian.

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Examples

  • "O, I wonder -- I _wonder_ if she will really try to get the place," Olga said to herself as the door closed.

    The Torch Bearer A Camp Fire Girls' Story 1883

  • "I wonder, -- I _wonder_ -- if I shall ever live anything all straight out!"

    Real Folks 1865

  • Now don 'wonder, don' wonder— "He became so emphatic in impressing on Carling the fact that he didn't wonder that he lost the thread of his discourse and concluded by announcing to the bar at large that he was a" physcal anmal. "

    Book 2, Chapter 2. Experiments in Convalescence. 1920

  • Oh, I wonder "(and here, no doubt, the little creases came into her cheeks again, for she laughed softly to herself)," I _wonder_ what they'll say or do when they find out! "

    In Brief Authority F. Anstey 1895

  • Sanchez started out as a youth recruit at Chilean club Cobreloa, where his goal-scoring exploits earned him the nickname "wonder kid".

    The Globe and Mail - Home RSS feed 2011

  • Sanchez started out as a youth recruit at Chilean club Cobreloa, where his goal-scoring exploits earned him the nickname "wonder kid".

    The Globe and Mail - Home RSS feed 2011

  • And: Whether wonder is an expression of extreme depression that cannot abide confrontation with grotesque reality or merely a convenient avoidance of same, it uniformly evokes deep nostalgia for the personal or political past that existed before we came to this pass of maturity or social, national, or international distress.

    Bukiet on Brooklyn Books Hal Duncan 2009

  • "In Other Worlds" Doubleday, 255 pages, $24.95 is Ms. Atwood's engaging account of a lifetime's reactions to what she calls "wonder tales," from the "flying rabbits" of her childhood imagination to discovering H.

    The Future of Science Fiction Tom Shippey 2011

  • And: Whether wonder is an expression of extreme depression that cannot abide confrontation with grotesque reality or merely a convenient avoidance of same, it uniformly evokes deep nostalgia for the personal or political past that existed before we came to this pass of maturity or social, national, or international distress.

    Archive 2009-07-01 Hal Duncan 2009

  • If not, he will be a one term wonder and the left will be out forever - but at some considerable short term cost.

    Smoking Guns and the Morality of Parliamentary Privilege 2009

Comments

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  • i wondered when he would come

    February 15, 2007

  • blah blah blah

    February 15, 2007

  • Wheather i'm dead or alive you are grounded for life.

    February 15, 2007

  • except for the bread.

    April 21, 2011