Marvelled

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To experience intense amazement and admiration toward something exceptional or astonishing
2. To have been filled with surprise and admiration at something remarkable
3. To react with awe or amazement due to an extraordinary event or object

Etymology: "Marvelled" is the past tense of "marvel," and the verb carries the wonder of its Latin source with it. The story begins with the plural of a Latin adjective: "mīrābilia" meant "wonderful things," the neuter plural of "mīrābilis," "strange, wonderful." That adjective grew from "mīrus," "wonderful," and "mīror," "to wonder at," so the idea of gazing in astonishment sits right inside the word's oldest form. The plural passed into Vulgar Latin as something like "miribilia," then into Old French as "merveille," meaning "a wonder" or a marvellous thing. English borrowed that noun in the 1300s as "merveile," and the sense of the noun gradually turned into the verb we use now, to be struck with wonder. "Mirabilia" survives as a separate English doublet, a borrowing straight from Latin that kept the original shape.

Synonyms: wondered, gawked, admired, astonished, amazed

Antonyms: disdained, dismissed, scorned, regarded, neglected