Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Flabbergasted

A new year, a new Wednesday, a new bit of slang for your enjoyment.

Are you flabbergasted? Well, since Slang-o-rama posts every Wednesday, you shouldn't be. ;-)

 This week, let's take a closer look at flabbergasted. Sounds like what what happens to the physical body when too much chocolate is consumed over the holidays, right? However, just to be clear, here is the definition from Dictionary.com:

flabbergast (verb) — to overcome with surprise and bewilderment; astound. 

Where did such a strange word come from? I have no idea. Do you?

Time for research!
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The Dictionary.com entry has this to say about the origin: 

1765–75; variant of flabagast (perhaps flabb(y) + aghast)

Hmmmm. I'll bet we can find a bit more about this odd bit of slang. Sure enough, the Online Etymology Dictionary says:

flabbergast (v) —1772, flabbergasted, mentioned (with bored) in a magazine article that year as a new vogue word, of uncertain origin. Perhaps from some dialect (in 1823 flabbergast was noted as a Sussex word), perhaps ultimately an arbitrary formation alluding to flabby or flapper and aghast. "Like many other popular words expressing intensity of action, ... not separable into definite elements or traceable to a definite origin" [Century Dictionary]. Related: Flabbergasted; flabbergasting; flabbergastation.

World Wide Words adds a little more (and has a nice write-up about the word in general), which notes that the first part of the word might be linked to flabby, "suggesting that somebody is so astonished that they shake like a jelly."

StackExchange also has a discussion of the word's etymology, including the following:

Here’s the OED’s etymological note (lightly edited): First mentioned in 1772 as a new piece of fashionable slang; possibly of dialectal origin; Moor 1823 records it as a Suffolk word, and Jamieson, Supplement 1825, has flabrigast, 'to gasconade' [to boast extravagantly], flabrigastit 'worn out with exertion', as used in Perthshire. The formation is unknown; it is plausibly conjectured that the word is an arbitrary invention suggested by flabby adj. or flap n. and aghast adj.

With that, I welcome you to 2019! Let us pray for a minimum of gasconade in the coming year, so we don't suffer from an overdose of flabbergastation.

I am already flabbergasted. Less gasconade, please.
Clio, by Pierre Mignard [Public domain]