Speak Better English with Harry | Episode 562

In this episode, you will learn different ways to say “I’m shocked” in English and how native speakers use them in real situations. Each expression is explained in simple, clear language so you can understand the meaning, the tone, and when to use it.

This lesson is ideal for English learners at intermediate and advanced levels who want to expand vocabulary, improve speaking confidence, and sound more natural in conversations. By the end, you’ll know how to express surprise, disbelief, or strong emotion in a more accurate and fluent way.

Transcript

0:09

Hi there, this is Harry. Welcome back to Advanced English Lessons with Harry, where I try to help you to get a better understanding of the English language, to help you with your conversational skills, your business English skills, interview skills, whatever your goals are, we're here to help. And for those of you and your friends or family who want one-to-one lessons, well, you know what to do. Just get in touch, www.englishlessonviaskype.com and you can apply for a free trial lesson and we'd be very happy to hear from you and very happy to help you. What am I going to talk to you about today? Well, today, the important part of this, we're going to look at ways to say that I am shocked in English. So when we are shocked, we're also surprised. So ways in which we can say shocked in English. So there are a number of ways to express being shocked. Of course, you can just have an expression on your face, and you don't have to say anything. And people will immediately know by the look on your face that you're somewhat shocked by what you've seen or what you've heard or what somebody has said to you. But there are lots of expressions and words that you can use. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to go down through them one by one. Then I'll go back through them and give you some examples. So let's start. I'm speechless. I'm lost for words. I'm flabbergasted. I'm gobsmacked. Astounded. So I am astounded. Staggered. I was or I am staggered. Stunned. Startled. I was startled. And taken aback. Now, a few of those are a little bit more formal than others, and I'll explain those as we go through them. And then my jaw dropped. And what else? I jumped out of my skin. Okay. And finally, there were some raised eyebrows, raised eyebrows. So all of those are these ways in which we can say shocked. So English ways to say shocked. So let me go through them one by one. So the first one, I'm speechless. Well, when we talk about speech, speech is how we talk. We can make a speech, a wedding speech, a speech at a presentation. And when we are speechless, it means we can't say anything. Now, we could be speechless because we've lost our voice. We can't speak at all. But when we are shocked, you know, usually we go, and because of that intake of breath, it's very hard to get the words out. So this is where it comes from. I'm speechless, or I was speechless. So some news you get that really shocks you. So you heard that your boss was leaving the company and he'd been working there for, as far as you knew, 20 years. And so he was one of these, as we call them, company guys, somebody who would never leave, then he never go anywhere else. But you heard he's leaving and he's going to go and live in the country and he's going to spend his time fishing. And you go, oh my God, I'm speechless. I just don't know what to say. I thought he would be here until he died. So you're speechless. Okay, and then the second one, I'm lost for words. Again, something similar. When we're speechless, we can't find the words to say. So another way to express it would be to say, I'm lost for words. Now, this could be a shock or a surprise that's either positive or negative. So you can be lost for words when you hear some bad news. You can be lost for words when something positive happens. So, for example, it's your birthday. Let's say it's your 30th or your 40th or your 50th, one of those special birthdays where there's zero. And when you come home, you open the door and you say, hi, hi, I'm back. And you open the door into the living room. And surprise, and all of your friends are there. There's a big streamer across the wall, which is telling you happy birthday. And then everybody starts congratulating you and they make presentations and gifts. And you're standing there looking around at all your friends. And yeah, you're lost for words. And that's exactly what you say. Oh, I'm lost for words. I just, I wasn't expecting this. That's not what I was expecting at all. In fact, I thought I was just going to have a quiet evening. In fact, I really wanted to forget about it, but I'm so happy that you're all here. So you're lost for words. The next is I'm flabbergasted. Now, here, you're very careful with the pronunciation and just check on the spelling. We'll put it up on the screen. Flabbergasted. Flabbergasted. Very, very British English word. And it usually is there to describe when somebody is really surprised by whatever they've seen or whatever they've heard. Yeah. So for example, if you're sitting at home one morning and you hear the postman coming and there's a letter falls on through the letter box and you go and you pick it up and you don't recognize the type of envelope, but your name is on it. So you go inside, you sit down and you open the envelope and you go, oh my God. And then you try to explain to your wife or partner, like, I've won the first prize, that competition that I said I would enter, but I didn't, I'm flabbergasted. I don't know what to say. And you're also flabbergasted, being really, really surprised by the news you've received in the envelope. You just go, you start mumbling and muttering and you just can't get the words out. You're flabbergasted. So that's really good news because obviously you get a prize or you've won something. It's bound to be good news. It's either going to be a monetary prize or a holiday or a new car, whatever it might be. But yeah, you never expected to win it. You never expected to be in that position. So when you do get the news and your name and those details appear in the envelope when you open it, well, of course, you're going to be absolutely surprised. And the word flabbergasted, flabbergasted. Next word is a sort of opposite in the sense of not so formal word. So it's quite an informal word. Okay, so when we say gob smacked, gob is a very, very slang word for your mouth. So this is your gob. So if somebody tells you to close your gob or shut your gob, it means to not to say anything. So when you're gob smacked, it's like somebody putting the hand smack over your mouth. So when you can't say anything, yeah. So again, when you get a surprise or something happens that you weren't expecting or some news that somebody has told you, then yeah, I'm totally gobsmacked, totally gobsmacked. So you're telling your friends in the bar the next night or two nights later, what you never guess what happened. I mean, I was just sitting in my office doing something and my boss called and said he wanted to talk to me and he hands you this envelope and you think you're going to get sacked. Yeah, I said, I don't know what I was going to see, but when I opened the envelope, I got that promotion, you know, and I'd almost forgotten about it because it's so long ago since I spoke to him and there it is in black and white. I was completely gobsmacked. Yeah, really, really good news. But yeah, I just didn't know what to say. Didn't know whether to thank him, whether to shake him by the hands. In fact, I could have even hugged him. I was so happy. So I was completely gobsmacked. Now, the next few are very, very similar. Some of them are formal. Some of them are more informal. So let me give them to you quickly. Astounded, a little bit more formal. I'm astounded. Yeah, I'm astounded by the reaction of the party members. So it could be a debate on television and you've got two politicians arguing what's right and what's wrong and do they agree or don't they agree? And of course, if you listen to politicians, they never listen to each other. They just try to make the point and then they cut across each other and you have this and one turns to the other and say, well, I'm absolutely astounded that your party would take this position. So astounded, quite formal way to say, yeah, I'm really surprised. Or as I said before, I'm gobsmacked. So astounded. I'm astounded that you would take that position. I'm astounded that the government would see it appropriate to close down these bicycle lanes when everybody's trying to encourage people to have more exercise. I'm astounded by whatever you happen to hear. Astounded. Staggered again, staggered. When you stagger, you're not able to keep your balance. So when somebody is staggered, they're a little bit off balance. So they're caught off balance by what somebody has said. Oh, well, this news, I'm staggered by the news. I mean, you see these sort of headlines, you're just staggered, you know, yeah. So something about a robbery that the bank in the center of the city was robbed the night before and the robbers got away with 10 or 20 million in cash, but something like 40 million euro of jewelry taken from some safe deposit box. And you say, wow, you're absolutely staggered that people would have that amount of jewelry sitting in a safety deposit box in a bank. I mean, it's just amazing what people collect. I'm really, really staggered when I saw the story. So something not bad news. It's not necessarily good news, but it's news that is very, very surprising. So wow, I'm staggered, staggered by what I've seen, staggered by what I've heard, staggered by the enormity of this particular headline, the enormity of the robberies and everything else, just really, really staggered. Next three are also quite commonly used, some of them formal, some of them informal. Stunned, it would be a little bit more formal. Startled, it's a bit neutral. Taken aback is a little bit more informal. Taken aback means somebody sort of stops you in your tracks by what they say, so not physically. Oh, I was taken aback by the reaction I got when I suggested that we should all return to the office on the 1st of September. I got such an amount of abuse. I was really taken aback. Startled, not so much so exciting, but you could be startled by something that you weren't expecting. So perhaps you're sitting there, as we might be, and you're daydreaming and you're maybe looking out of the window and somebody comes in and says something to you and you don't hear them and they come a bit closer and they maybe tap you on your shoulder. Oh my God. Yeah, you startled me. Yeah. So when somebody startles you, you're usually not focusing, you're not paying attention because perhaps you're daydreaming, as I said, looking out the window or thinking about your round of golf at the weekend or thinking about your fishing trip or whatever you're doing, your mind isn't on something else. You don't hear the door opening. You don't hear the person say, excuse me, and when they come up to you, whoa, you're startled. Yeah, okay. Stunned, yeah, is a little bit more, as I said, it's a little bit more formal. To be stunned is, again, neither negative or positive. It's more neutral. I was stunned. Yeah, just mean, if you stun somebody often with an electric shock, this is what the police forces use somewhere. They have these called taser guns. So you fire at somebody and then an electric volt hits them and that will sort of effectively knock them unconscious or certainly knock them to the ground. So they are stunned, literally stunned. So when you're stunned, somebody stops you in your tracks and you can't think for a minute and you say, oh my God, what was that? So you have to think and then put yourself in the position and see what happened, what somebody said to you. So you can't be a little bit stunned. So they would all be connected with shock and surprise. Okay, so the next expression is my jaw dropped. This is our jaw, the jawbone, yeah? So the lower jaw and the upper jaw. So when we say my jaw dropped, it means your mouth opened. So such was the shock, such were the words or whatever you had seen that your mouth opened with surprise, thinking something might come out, like some words, but just being surprised by that type of whatever you saw on the internet, whatever you heard, whatever somebody told you, whatever you read, whatever it might be, it was a jaw-dropping moment. My jaw-dropped. So we use that as an expression. So again, you're talking to your friends and you're talking about the things that had happened the week before. Maybe you haven't seen your friends for a couple of weeks. And you say, oh, look, wait till I tell you. I mean, I met Michael. You know, we haven't seen Michael for such a long time. I haven't seen him, I think, since we left university. But when he told me where he's working and the salary he's earning, my jaw dropped. I just didn't think he was capable. And certainly I didn't even think those sort of salaries were available around here. But my jaw dropped. Okay. Okay, the next expression is, I jumped out of my skin. Okay. Or you jumped out of your skin. Literally, you're the skin and your body. So usually if you get such a shock or such a scare, something happens, you, oh, and you, we say, oh, I jumped out of my skin. Yeah. Or I almost jumped out of my skin. Normally when looking out the window or you're sitting on a park bench or you're somewhere and you're not paying attention, your mind's on something else and a stranger or somebody you know comes up to you, taps you on the shoulder or says, excuse me, and they get a bit little bit close to you than more, closer than you had expected, and you get a bit of a fright. Oops, and you almost, or you do, jump out of your skin. Okay. And then finally, we can use the word raised eyebrows. Okay, so I can't, well, I can, a bit of a go like that. I can raise my eyebrows. Yeah. So when we raise our eyebrows, we usually raise them with a little bit of shock. Yeah, what was that? Yeah. So you can just have that facial expression. So raised eyebrows. But when we say there were raised eyebrows, it means that people around you were shocked when they heard whatever you had to say. So, for example, you're sitting at the boardroom or the meeting room, all your colleagues are there, people are sitting there, and people are expecting the same old type of things to come out. Oh, yeah, the sales this week, well, la la la, and the sales next month might be blah, blah, blah. So everybody's going through the normal thing. Nothing's out of the ordinary. Then when it comes to your turn, you say, well, look, I think this is probably a best time to tell you that I'm leaving the company next week. There were really raised eyebrows. When you said that, people were looking at you thinking, that's not such a good place to mention it. Why wouldn't you have mentioned it to the boss on your own? So you're sitting there and you're telling everybody that people. So there were really raised eyebrows. So that means people were shocked. People were a little bit stunned. People were taken aback by what you had said. Okay, so raised eyebrows. Okay, so those are the type of expressions we use or ways of saying we are shocked. Now, there are other ways in which people can say they are shocked. They can use words like, oh my God, yeah, you'd often hear that. And that would be a way of expressing a certain amount of shock. Yeah. Oh my God is quite a common way. Or if you are a fan of Friends, the TV series, and one of the girlfriends that Chandler had was a girl with long black hair and her favorite expression was, oh my God. Yeah. So if you watch Friends, you'll hear that all of the time. So there are different ways to use other words to express that type of shock and horror. And some people might just say, what was that? Yeah, and that could be a way of using it. So there's some varieties of it, or what the? And they don't complete it because the next word is going to be quite rude. So what the? Meaning, what was that? Or who said that? Or what's happened? Or just something a little bit less excitable like, would you look at that? Or just simply, oh my, yeah, now that's not really strong. So some of these shock expressions or expressions of shock are not so strong, but you hear them all the time. So let me give them to you again. Oh my God. Or, oh my, what was that? Or would you look at that? Or what the? Okay. And you can guess what will come after that. Or there's another one, very British English, crikey, yeah? And spelled C-R-I-K-E-Y, crikey with an exclamation mark. And often when you're writing these, you would usually follow them with an exclamation mark. So when people read it, they know that there's a certain amount of shock or surprise. Okay. All right. So different ways to say I'm shocked in English. Hopefully you've enjoyed those. Hopefully you can understand them and you can put them to some use. And if you want to contact me, well, then you can do so on www.englishlessonviaskype.com. Very happy to hear from you. And as I said, if you want to listen to the podcast, please do so. Okay, well, thanks for watching and thanks for listening. And join me again soon.