astonisher

1858, Abraham Lincoln, debate with Stephen A. Douglas on 10 July, 1858 in Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865, London: J.M. Dent and New York: Dutton, 1907, p. 88, It [this court decision] is the first of its kind; it is an astonisher in legal history; it is a new wonder of the world;

1987, Gary Jennings, Spangle, New York: Atheneum, “France,” Chapter 8, p. 867, The equestrian director introduced her with almost Florian-florid superlatives-the wonder of her time, the astonisher of even the most jaded connaisseurs du cirque, and so on and so on-but still keeping a mystery Mademoiselle Mystère’s specialty.

1874, The American Observer, New Series, Volume 1, “Rejoinder,” p. 525, “ […] Nothing whatever” ! (the italics are “S. S. C.’s,” the “astonisher” is mine.)

1947, Stewart Holbrook, The Story of American Railroads, American Legacy Press, 1981, Chapter 39, p. 443, More often than not these prophets […] belong to the oh-the-wonder-of-it-all school, who point to the sky as the new and sole artery of travel and transportation and marvel, in complete awe—which they indicate by running over with astonishers!—at the thought of monstrous planes hauling the freight and passengers of the nation, even of the world.

1984, Richard Hauer Costa, “The Grisly Graphics of Malcolm Lowry” in Gordon Bowker and Paul Tiessen (eds.), Proceedings of the London Conference on Malcolm Lowry, Goldsmith’s College, University of London and The Malcolm Lowry Review, Wilfrid Laurier University, p. 100, An ad for a boxing match can symbolize the uncommunicable, with its curious shape-of-the-type configurations—¡BOX!, with the ‘astonisher’ written upside down before the word and right side up after.