Appalling

How to spell appalling

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce appalling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does appalling mean?

1. adjectiveCausing shock, dismay, or horror; extremely bad.

Appalling in a sentence

• The customer service was so appalling that she cancelled the contract.

• The report exposed appalling conditions inside the factory.

Where does appalling come from?

Language of origin: French

This word descends from the verb 'appal', which English borrowed from the Old French apalir or apallir, meaning 'to grow pale' or 'to make pale'. That French verb rested on the Latin pallere, which literally meant 'to be pale', the same root that gives us 'pallid' and 'pall'. When the word entered English in the 1300s it kept the idea of the blood draining from a frightened face, so 'appal' first meant to make someone turn pale with dread. Over the centuries the sense hardened from mere fright into deep dismay and moral horror, and by the time the participle 'appalling' settled into modern use it described anything shockingly bad. The spelling trap comes straight from the morphology: the prefix ad- assimilated to ap-, doubling the p, while the base supplies a doubled l, so two pairs of letters hide in a short word.

How the word is built

• ap- (from Latin ad-: to)
• pall (from pallere: to grow pale)
• -ing (adjective/participle suffix)