I Can't Believe I Said "Flabbergasted!"

Mario Savio, "Free Speech Movement" UC Berkeley, 1964

This morning, during my Monday morning Bible Study of Job, I found myself using the word, "flabbergasted," in a sentence. I was surprised to hear it come into my brain and out of my mouth. It is a word I remember from my childhood (my parents might have used it?) but I have absolutely no recollection of ever having spoken it out loud before.

In the split second between thinking the word and uttering it, my mind (without any apparent help from me) fast forwarded through a series of odd-ball doubts and wonderments: "What a ridiculous word!" "What the heck does it really mean?" "Where did I dredge it up from?" "This is going to sound really stupid, especially coming from the pastor during a study of the book of Job!"

In that split-second of time, I expended so much energy analyzing the word that I immediately forgot the context in which I used it. I do remember, however, (after having spoken it) feeling that it had, in the end, expressed my thought perfectly.

My dictionary tells me that the word "flabbergast" started out as 18th-century slang (meaning, "to make speechless with amazement").

"What did you say?"

I can picture rebellious 18th century teenagers, defiantly shouting "flabbergast!" at the top of their lungs during family arguments, leaving their "stick-in-the-mud" "old fogey" parents with their mouths hanging open and completely ..... well..... completely flabbergasted!

"How dare you utter such unseemly flapdoodle!" one of the parents would respond, "Forsooth, you're nothing but a flamboyant, flannel-mouthed fibbertigibbet! Fie on thy flippant faucal faugh! Forsake and forbear such faux-futile flummery!"

"Yeah, sure," the youth would reply. "Whatever....."