appallment

English

Alternative forms

appalment

Etymology

From appall +‎ -ment. This word is likely a nonce; Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed to have coined it, but there are uses that predate Holmes and others that are unlikely to have picked it up from his use.

Noun

appallment (uncountable)

Shock or depression occasioned by terror or disgust; dismay; the state of being appalled.
- 1622, Francis, Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Alban [i.e. Francis Bacon], The Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh, […], London: […] W[illiam] Stansby for Matthew Lownes, and William Barret, →OCLC:
  the furious slaughter of them was a great discouragement and appallment to the rest: that there died upon the place all the chieftains
- 1965 ·, Joseph W. Cohen, The Superior Student in American Higher Education, page 99:
  I supopse we might way that if there truly has been a resurgence of interest in the state of the mind and culture of graduating students , particularly the abler ones, it could be attributed to a kind of appallment - appallment of the teacher at his own failures; appallment of the student at how little has been expected of him and how little responsibility has been put upon him for his education; appallment of the educated public at the limited and partial carry-over from formal education into everyday, actual life.
- 1974, Henry James, edited by Leon Edel, Letters - Volume 4, page 606:
  An old friend of mine here, Lucy Clifford (W.K.'s widow) who was there at the "high table" and has sent me a catalogue of the guests which I hang over in the appallment of fascination — or the fascination of appallment; and which, as she has just returned and I am to see her tonight, she will fill out with hideous detail — though indeed she appears, by a line she wrote me, to have enjoyed, rather, the weird desolation of it.
- 2010, James J. Kilpatrick, The Writer's Art:
  Michael Gartner, editor of The Des Moines Register & Tribune, sent him a reproachful note; Gartner was filled with appallment.