Appalled means filled with horror and dismay. Not offended — shocked, and rather sickened.
It is a strong word and it is at its best kept for real horrors, though British English cheerfully uses it about queue-jumping too. It takes by or at: appalled by the conditions, appalled at what she had said. The verb appal means to shock deeply, and the adjective appalling covers both the horrific and, in casual use, the merely very bad, as in appalling weather. Note the single l in appal and the double in appalling.
1adjectiveappalledDeeply shocked and dismayed.
“She was appalled by the state of the flat.”
From appall + -ed.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, A Song of Ice and Fire
First appears in chapter 17 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word