A negative word for surprising

shocking:

that offends or upsets people; that is morally wrong

Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries

Oddly, this definition does not mention the «surprise» element. However, if you look up the verb «shock,» you’ll see it is defined as:

to surprise and upset somebody

So a «shocking» action is both surprising and morally wrong (or perhaps just offensive or upsetting).

By the way, this word expresses a rather strong feeling, but since you say you want a word that describes someone who has «done something in the completely opposite way» from the right way, I’d say it fits.

However, if you’re actually talking to the person who has negatively surprised you, Josh61’s suggestion of «disappointing» may be better. Compared to «shocking,» I would say «disappointing» puts more emphasis on your feelings of being let down by this person, and less emphasis on the elements of surprise and wrongness.

Need synonyms for not surprising? Here’s a list of similar words from our thesaurus that you can use instead.

Adjective

Expected or obvious in nature

no wonder

expected

unsurprising

foreseeable

predictable

understandable

anticipated

probable

obvious

predicted

foreseen

to be expected

only to be expected

not unexpected

par for the course

what one would expect

on the cards

small wonder

little surprise

little wonder

no surprise

staring one right in the face

inevitable

logical

awaited

likely

normal

forecast

plausible

reasonable

natural

certain

sure

reliable

calculable

legitimate

valid

justified

correct

likeliest

sensible

practical

acceptable

accountable

right

conceivable

imaginable

rational

thinkable

knowable

formularized

formulaic

liable

expectable

nonrandom

sure-fire

prepared-for

most likely

“The fact that this official sabotaged the test is terrible, yet not surprising.”

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Sentences with the word not surprising

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Nearby Words

not surprisingly

not susceptible to

not swallow

not swallowed

not swallowing

not sweet

not surprised

not sure

not supporting

not supported

not support

not suitable

The entry for today is about two words that many of my students get confused about: “surprised” and “shocked”. We use “surprised” when we want to talk about a situation that we find unexpected. It is generally a positive or neutral situation. On the other hand, we use “shocked” when we want to talk about a situation that we find extremely unexpected. These situations are usually negative but sometimes they can be neutral. The important thing to remember is that “shocked” is much stronger than “surprised”. For example:

I thought Jenny was about 30, but she’s really 41. I was quite surprised.

I thought Jenny was about 30, but she’s really 56! I was shocked!

I was surprised when I found out that Bill got a promotion after working at the company for only two years.

I was shocked when I found out that Bill got a promotion after working at the company for only five months!

These are examples of neutral situations. We use “surprised” in the first sentence because we feel it was a little unexpected, but we use “shocked” in the second sentence because it was very unexpected. Here are some more example sentences:

I was really surprised when my husband remembered my birthday. He usually forgets it.

I was pleasantly surprised when Gerry came to my party. He is usually too busy to come to my parties.

I was totally shocked when I found out that my boss died from a heart attack! He was only 52 years old!

Yesterday, my company announced that at least 100 employees would have to be laid off. Everyone was so shocked because we thought the company was doing well.

Here, the first two sentences use “surprised” in positive ways, and the last two examples use “shocked” because the situations are very serious and negative.

Please remember that we use the -ed forms, “surprised” and “shocked” when we are talking about people’s feelings about a situation. We use the -ing forms, “surprising” and “shocking” when we want to talk about a situation itself. For example:

It was so surprising when Bill got a promotion after only working at the company for two years.

There was a huge tsunami in Japan recently. It was shocking to see the terrible destruction it caused!

Please note that in these cases, we use the word “it” with the -ing forms.