If you look up “surprised” in a thesaurus, you’ll find “shocked” is a synonym. During my time working as an editor, I don’t remember distinguishing between the two words. In the last few years, however, I’ve often come upon “I was shocked but not surprised” — or is it “surprised but not shocked”?  

In last week’s issue of his Picayune Sentinel, former Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn wrote that the indictment of Michael Madigan was “a surprise but hardly a shock.” New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman said that she was “shocked but not surprised” by Donald Trump’s defiance of the 2020 election results. Although one was shocked, not surprised, and the other surprised, not shocked, both journalists used “shock” and “surprise” in opposition. 

What either of them meant wasn’t entirely clear to me. 

In his English Help Online blog, Mike Cadman, an English teacher of nonnative speakers, distinguishes between the two words by degree of expectation, with “surprised” for unexpected situations and “shocked” for extremely unexpected situations. Since Trump told us beforehand that he would reject a loss, would Cadman take issue with Haberman’s use of “shocked”? What about Zorn’s not being shocked by Madigan’s startling indictment?

The suitable word is clearer in Cadman’s application of “surprised” to neutral or pleasant situations and “shocked” to something negative. For example, I would tell someone her gift surprised me but wouldn’t say it shocked me. 

Stephen L. Carter, a Yale law professor, novelist, and public intellectual, devoted a Bloomberg opinion column to “the opposition of shocked and surprised” after noticing that it “is suddenly everywhere.” Carter said that  “those who take grammar seriously have a responsibility to ensure that the expression is employed properly.”

Addressing the Haberman comment, Carter explains that saying that one is “shocked but not surprised” by Trump means that the behavior is shocking (bad) but nothing you didn’t expect of Trump. He gives other examples showing that “shocking” may express distress but not intense surprise to those who were paying attention. For example, the British newspaper The Independent found it shocking but not surprising that COVID infections in late 2020 were highest in the north of England. The Black Panther Party expressed shock about the 1971 police killing of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark but not surprise because “we have come to expect no better treatment.”

Most of Carter’s column focuses on “shocked but not surprised,” but he mentions an instance of the reverse. “I am not shocked but I am surprised,” an unnamed scholar said about Mississippi’s approving a new state flag without any Confederate symbols. If we consider “shocking” as suited to a shameful or distressing situation, we can take the comment to mean that Mississippi’s action was anything but shameful, but it was surprising, given the state’s racist history. 

Zorn’s comment can be read in a similar way: Madigan’s indictment was a surprise but not distressing, at least to most of us. 

Thinking of “shocked” as a higher degree of “surprised” can trip me up when I try to understand their use in opposition. It’s more helpful for me to think of “shock” for distasteful contexts. Donald Trump may do me a service here. As the headline on Carter’s column noted, “shocked but not surprised” was “a mantra for the Trump era.” Whenever I hear the phrase, I’ll recall behavior that was shocking but from Trump not surprising.