When someone is surprised, they may be stunned.
Stunned is a concept that refers to a person who is absorbed or stupefied by a strange event or thing. Astonished, therefore, can be used as a synonym for surprised or speechless .
For example: "When he heard the girl's question, the teacher was stunned and did not know what to answer" , "The man continued shouting while the neighbors, stunned, could not understand what was happening" , "Why are you stunned?" “I told you that I was going to have a very original haircut.”
The etymological origin of the term that concerns us now is found in Latin. It comes from the word attonitus , which is composed of two different parts: the prefix add and the verb tonare .
Stunned concept
The idea of astonished is associated with bewilderment . People, upon observing or hearing what produces surprise, enter a kind of state of shock and are unable to articulate a response. While an individual is stunned, he is unable to react, as if he were processing the information that surprised him to then develop a corresponding behavior.
Suppose a man observes how a car driving along a ridge road suddenly slides off the cliff and falls off the cliff. The witness, in the first instance, is stunned by the magnitude of the accident. After a few seconds, however, he manages to react and calls an ambulance while approaching the scene to try to help the injured.
The usual thing is that, after coming out of the state of shock , the person offers a response to the event that caused them surprise. If a parent is stunned when his child insults him, when he comes out of the stupor he will surely reprimand him and explain to the child that he should always address him with respect.
When Lionel Messi played for FC Barcelona, the public used to be stunned.
Shocking facts
We can also highlight a series of real facts and news that when someone hears them it is normal for them to be astonished:
- In 1939, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
- In 1518 many people died in Strasbourg due to a dancing epidemic.
- Harry Nilson's hugely successful song “Coconut” only has a single chord.
- Actress Marilyn Monroe had an IQ higher than Albert Einstein.
Stunned public in sports
In the world of sports, the term that we are now using is used with some regularity to record how players or spectators are faced with the game played by a team.
An example of this was when in FC Barcelona footballers like Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suárez shone with all their potential, deploying their weapons to achieve victory. In that case, both the rival and the fans were astonished by the spectacular nature of their game and the incredible things they did with the ball at their feet.
The term in literature
Within the field of literature, finally, we can highlight that there are various publications that use the term in question in their titles.
This would be the case, for example, of the book “Hombre atónito” , which the Spanish Antonio Mingote launched on the market in 1976 .