Astounding
What it means
Overwhelmingly impressive or surprising in scale or quality.
Reach for it when reserving emphatic praise for a result that overturns normal expectations
The youth orchestra made astounding progress during the summer.
Words to choose between 6
| playful | |
|---|---|
| everyday | |
| warm |
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| professional | |
| literary |
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playful
Fits when informal excitement outweighs literal precision
Careful Incredible literally questions believability and can undermine a factual claim.
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everyday
Fits when immediate impact briefly stops the audience
Careful Stunning often praises appearance and can be too visual for measured progress.
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warm
Fits when great surprise remains the main response
Careful Astonishing can emphasize unexpectedness without astounding's sense of magnitude.
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warm
Fits when performance is exceptionally strong
Careful Phenomenal is promotional and may sound inflated without a benchmark.
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professional
overwhelming
Fits when the scale exceeds ordinary capacity to respond
Careful Overwhelming can be burdensome or negative and does not itself praise.
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literary
Fits when quantity, effort, or ability is exceptionally great
Careful Prodigious is conspicuous vocabulary and fits magnitude better than beauty.
Opposites 3
- unremarkable
- expected
- underwhelming
Common phrases 3
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astounding success
The vaccination drive achieved astounding success in remote districts.
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astounding amount
Volunteers cleared an astounding amount of debris before noon.
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absolutely astounding
The restored mosaic is absolutely astounding at close range.
Definitions and examples are written for this site. How words are chosen Recording: Vealhurl, Southern England accent, from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 Updated