take aback

What does take aback mean?

take aback means "surprise greatly; knock someone's socks off".

What is another word for take aback?

Close synonyms include shock, floor, ball over, blow out of the water. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is take aback a common word?

take aback is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for take aback come from Princeton University’s WordNet. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.