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I have the word ошеломленный on a text I am reading, but it is written as ошеломленно. I cannot understand what is happening with this adjective's suffix? I have looked at all the charts and "но" does not seem to be a suffix option for adjectives. The context sentence is:

Когда четверо подземных странников - Гарри, Рон, Джинни и Локонс - с головы, до пят мокрые, грязные, а Гарру еще и в пятнах вошли в кабинет, все, кто там был, ошеломленно замолчали но тишина в тот же миг взорвалась воплем: -Джинни!

Is the adjective in the past tense? Thank you for the help!

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  • Either it's a typo or you are confusing something, the mentioned sentence is ungrammatical.
    – shabunc ♦
    Apr 21, 2016 at 3:49
  • I put the entire sentence, it was very long. Thought a portion would be enough. Maybe it makes more sense now?
    – Luisa
    Apr 21, 2016 at 3:57
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    FYI: the language of this translation is not good. It's awkward and cumbersome. I suggest comparing with a far better variant. Гарри, Рон, Джинни и Чаруальд появились на пороге, заляпанные грязью, слизью, (а Гарри даже и кровью). На какое-то время в комнате повисло гробовое молчание. Затем раздался вопль. — Джинни!
    – Nadia Solovyeva
    Apr 21, 2016 at 4:17
  • It can be either adjective of neuter singular or adverb. In this sentence it is an adverb.
    – Anixx
    Apr 28, 2016 at 18:43
  • Your sentence is lacking two necessary commas.
    – Anixx
    Apr 28, 2016 at 18:45

3 Answers 3

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It's an adverb, which is what -но usually forms. Ошеломленно describes замолчали.

Adjectives have no tense; that said, ошеломлённый is not an adjective but a participle of ошеломить, and as such, is indeed in the past tense (the present participle would be ошеломляемый); but then again, tense is no longer relevant when the participle becomes an adverb. Passive ones are formed from past participles by default. A present-tense participial adverb ошеломляемо would mean "stunnably" and it's rather hard to imagine a context in which someone would need a word like that.

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  • Now I understand. The dictionary said it was an adjective so I was very confused. I should have figured out from the context that it was an adverb but for some reason I did not. Thank you!
    – Luisa
    Apr 21, 2016 at 4:05
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First of all, there is no suffix -но in Russian, it's suffix -енн- from adjective "ошеломленный" (actualy, it's not an adjective in russian, it is something we call "причастие". Basicly, it's form of verb (in our case form of verb "ошеломить"), which is formed with differnt suffixes, and one of them is -енн. In English it is called "participle") + suffix of adverb -о. Second, adjectives haven't got any tense in Russian.

And "ошеломленно" is an adverb and it means stunningly or dazedly, more detailed meanings are in previous answers. It's will be more easy understand Russian words, if you will know how they were formed. For this example it will be like this:

шелом (this word is outdated, it's from Old Russian, now it is "шлем" that is translated "helmet") + o- + -и- + -ть --> ошеломить + -енн- --> ошеломленный + -o --> ошеломленно.

That is how it is done in Russia on Russian lessons, you should try it, it really become easier to understand the meaning and the right spelling of any word you want.

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It is and adverb meaning 'in condition of being stunned'. I don't think it's good Russian to say "ошеломлённо замолчали" (style-wise), maybe because "ошеломлённо" is more about mode of action ('how' they did something, e.g. "ошеломлённо /за/хлопали ресницами" sounds natural), rather than about the reason of switching to inaction like here ("будучи ошеломлены, замолчали" or "ошеломлённые, они замолчали" would sound much better). Also, going from momentary 'change of state' to continuous (замолчали -> молчали) would 'repair' the style: "ошеломлённо молчали" (in what condition they were while keeping silence) seems OK for me.

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