The Collaborative International Dictionary
Dismay \Dis*may"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Dismayed; p. pr. & vb. n. Dismaying.] [OE. desmaien, dismaien, OF. esmaier; pref. es- (L. ex) + OHG. magan to be strong or able; akin to E. may. In English the pref. es- was changed to dis- (L. dis-). See May, v. i.]
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To disable with alarm or apprehensions; to depress the spirits or courage of; to deprive or firmness and energy through fear; to daunt; to appall; to terrify.
Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed.
--Josh. i. 9.What words be these? What fears do you dismay?
--Fairfax. -
To render lifeless; to subdue; to disquiet. [Obs.]
Do not dismay yourself for this.
--Spenser.Syn: To terrify; fright; affright; frighten; appall; daunt; dishearthen; dispirit; discourage; deject; depress. -- To Dismay, Daunt, Appall. Dismay denotes a state of deep and gloomy apprehension. To daunt supposes something more sudden and startling. To appall is the strongest term, implying a sense of terror which overwhelms the faculties.
So flies a herd of beeves, that hear, dismayed, The lions roaring through the midnight shade.
--Pope.Jove got such heroes as my sire, whose soul No fear could daunt, nor earth nor hell control.
--Pope.Now the last ruin the whole host appalls; Now Greece has trembled in her wooden walls.
--Pope.
Wiktionary
vb. (present participle of dismay English)
WordNet
adj. causing consternation; "appalling conditions" [syn: appalling]
Usage examples of "dismaying".
The thing spun about with dismaying mobility and came at him again, the vicious blade leading.
He had learned marvelous and dismaying new things—but that only increased the need to learn the rest.
They were now ringed by machines, several of which were truck-sized, and there was a dismaying assortment of rotating blades, pincers, and drills.
Carter's past willingness to serve as an elections watchdog stems from his own dismaying experience with voter fraud.
This sort of confession is complimentary to a man of middle age, but to a contemporary it is a dismaying bore.
A second shot was so dismaying that Pittman acted without thinking, flipping sideways off the top of the wall.
His stomach rolled alarmingly in his gut, and a fainting kind of nausea seized him, the most dismaying and unmanning kind, the kind that makes you feel like crying out to God to make it stop.
With the door only fractionally open the suddenly deepened roar from the engines was startling but nowhere nearly as dismaying as the snow-laden gust of icy wind that whistled into the fuselage.
The distance was at least fifty feet, a distance sufficient to arouse in even the most optimistic mind dismaying thoughts of fractured femurs and tibias.
And then he dismissed the thought, for an even more dismaying factor had now to be taken into consideration: in the far distance could be heard the sound of sirens, in the far distance could be seen the wavering beams of approaching headlamps.
A very broad man of only medium height, he had iron-grey hair, a deeply-trenched, tanned face, the unmistakable cast of authority and an air about him of almost dismaying competence.
But more dismaying was the fact that apart from a token sip of celebration champagne he had never touched hard alcohol in his life.
The dismaying thing is that there is nobody to stop him from going clear to New York except McClellan, who is exceeding his authority by acting like the field commander of all our troops facing Lee, for which I suppose the Prsdt should be thankful.
He would work on that first, having wrestled with it for months, ever since that dismaying session with McClellan at Harrison's Landing, coming back from the Peninsula, when he'd had to suffer instruction from his military commander on political goals.