Astonishment mixed with bewildered admiration.
Astonishment mixed with bewildered admiration — surprise at something one can scarcely comprehend.
A high-intensity surprise whose signature is bewilderment combined with admiration: “amaze suggests an effect of bewilderment,” and one is amazed “because we cannot understand how it came to pass” (literally “put into a maze”). In modern use it skews positive, pairing with wonder and admiration (“watched in amazement”). Where astonishment foregrounds the incredible fact, amazement foregrounds the perceiver's admiring inability to account for it; calmer, contemplative wonder lacks its jolt.
From amaze (1580s, “confound with sudden surprise or wonder”), a back-formation from Middle English amased “stunned, bewildered,” literally “put into a maze” (a- + the root of maze).
A clear softening: the earliest force was negative/incapacitating (“stupefied, bewildered, terrified”); amazing meant “dreadful” into the 1590s before its now-dominant positive “wonderful” sense (from 1704). No reliable recent-generation shift beyond this.