WONDER • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Wonder

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/wˈəndər/ Listen

verb

Wonder v. i. (past & past part. wondered; pres. part. wondering)

To be affected with surprise or admiration; to be struck with astonishment; to be amazed; to marvel. "I could not sufficiently wonder at the intrepidity of these diminutive mortals." "We cease to wonder at what we understand."

To feel doubt and curiosity; to wait with uncertain expectation; to query in the mind; as, he wondered why they came. "I wonder, in my soul, What you would ask me, that I should deny."

noun

Wonder n.

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. "They were filled with wonder and amazement at that which had happened unto him." "Wonder is the effect of novelty upon ignorance." Note: Wonder expresses less than astonishment, and much less than amazement. It differs from admiration, as now used, in not being necessarily accompanied with love, esteem, or approbation.

A cause of wonder; that which excites surprise; a strange thing; a prodigy; a miracle. " Babylon, the wonder of all tongues." "To try things oft, and never to give over, doth wonders." "I am as a wonder unto many."

Seven wonders of the world. See in the Dictionary of Noted Names in Fiction.

adjective

Wonder adj. Wonderful. (Obs.) "After that he said a wonder thing."

adverb

Wonder adv. Wonderfully. (Obs.)

See images of 'Wonder'

Etymology of 'Wonder'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Wonder" Quotes from Famous Books

... changed their minds. They took ship and went away, and all the surviving Trojans, relieved from their siege, rushed down to the shore, where all they found was a monstrous wooden horse. While they were looking at it in wonder, a Greek came out of the rocks, and told them that his name was Sinon, and that he had been cruelly left behind by the Greeks, who had grown weary of the siege and gone home, but that if the wonderful horse were once taken into Troy it would serve as another Palladium. ...

— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge

... no wonder that some people wish that we had never succeeded in splitting the atom. But atomic power, like any other force of nature, is not evil in itself. Properly used, it is an instrumentality for human betterment. As a source of ...

— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman

... from 60 to 80 per cent of the cases, but these investigations were not so full as that of the Committee of Fifty, and it is safer to conclude, for the present at least, that intemperance figures as a cause in about fifty per cent in the cases of serious crime. The wonder is that any one cause could figure in so many cases when there are so many varied influences in society depressing men. Of course intemperance can, as has already been said, in large part be ascribed to the ...

— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... "I wonder what they had to say to each other? It strikes one as a rather peculiar proceeding, all the same, to run away from a threatened danger at six in the evening, and at midnight, when nothing has occurred to alter ...

— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... impulses, and emotions bear only remotely upon our present inquiry; as, for instance, the instinct of flight and the emotion of fear, the instinct of curiosity and the emotion of wonder, the instinct of pugnacity and the emotion of anger. Certain others, however, are not merely radical and permanent parts of our nature, but determine human existence, the greater part of its failures and successes, its folly and wisdom, its history and its destiny. Two of these—the parental ...

— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

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