Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a general intensifier, e.g. a shocking bad hat, a very unpleasant person.

c.1790		‘Peter Pindar’ ‘The Rights of Kings’ Works (1794) III 32: I deem their Monarch’s jacket rather strait, Mesdames Poissardes, ’twas shockingly ill-bred.
1807		Irving & Paulding Salmagundi (1860) 167: It is a melancholy truth that this same New York, though the most charming, pleasant, polished and praiseworthy city under the sun, and in a word the bonne bouche of the universe, is most shockingly ill-natured and sarcastic, and wickedly given to all manner of backslidings.
1822		Tom and Jerry; A Musical Extravaganza I viii: I never was so shockingly bit in all my life.
1825		T.C. Croker Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland (1862) 30: Describing a female beauty, an Irish peasant may perhaps say, that Peggy So-and-so is a shocking pretty girl.
1831		‘Gallery of 140 Comicalities’ Bell’s Life in London 24 June 2/1: What a Shocking Bad Bonnet!
1831		Mr Mathews’ Comic Annual 13: What a shocking bad hat!
1833		T. Hood ‘A Charity Sermon’ Works (1862) II 426: I let my very old (condemn’d) house to a man, at a rent that was shockingly low.
1837		R.M. Bird Nick of the Woods I 184: Shocking bad woods to be lost in!
1841		‘Umbrella Courtship’ Dublin Comic Songster 13: It was a shocking wet day.
1841		‘The Queen’s Wedding’ in Gentleman’s Spicey Songster 34: They said your hat was shocking bad.
1843		T. Haliburton Sam Slick in England II 273: He [...] will miss you shockingly.
1846		Durivage & Burnham Stray Subjects (1848) 61: A ‘shocking bad ’un’ was his hat.
1851		Melville Moby Dick (1907) 381: It was a shocking bad wound.
1851		G. Thompson Jack Harold 27: My head pains me shockingly.
1860		E. Eden Semi-Attached Couple (1979) 108: She’s shocking uncouth.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor I 39/2: We was shocking hard up, and she pawned nigh everything. [Ibid.] 288/2: The Lyceum’s built shockingly orkered.
1870		Harrisburg Teleg. (PA) 6 Oct. 1/4: I feel so shockingly ill.
1877		J. Diprose London Life 65: A blear-eyed drink-sodden man, wearing [...] a ‘shocking bad hat’.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 4 Apr. 18/3: Gazed at calmly and dispassionately, it seems but a feeble amusement for a king to engage a harper merely to throw pikes at, especially as being such a shocking bad aim, he could never hit him.
1892		‘Under the Harrow’ in ‘F. Anstey’ Mr Punch’s Model Music Hall 140: Regular bounder. Shocking bad hat!
1894		G. du Maurier Trilby 268: They were shocking bad artists.
1901		Bulletin (Sydney) 28 Sept. 3/2: His hat was shocking bad, / He wore a faded tie, / And yet, withal, he had / A moist and shining eye.
1907		Muskogee Times-Democrat (OK) 6 Nov. 4/2: ‘If it is wrong to compel the education of the children of the country, then it is shockingly lame’.
1913		C. Mackenzie Sinister Street II 1100: He went as white as . . . oh, he did go shocking white.
1919		Eve. Teleg. (Angus, Scot.) 3 July 9/5: [headline] Bigamy Shockingly Prevalent.
1921		Tatler (London) 13 July 58/1: [advert] A man wearing a shockingly bad hat may pass unnoticed [etc].
1937		D.L. Sayers Busman’s Honeymoon (1974) 116: ’Is pore ’ead’s bashed in something shocking!
1958		John Arden Live Like Pigs Act VIII: Fair shocking disgusting.
1960		(con. c.1918) D. Holman-Hunt My Grandmothers and I (1987) 24: My treasures! [...] I’m shockingly late.
1968		G. Slatter Pagan Game (1969) 209: You’ve all played shocking up to now.
1978		News Jrnl (Mansfield, OH) 29 Dec. 29/3: What they are designed to achieve [...] remains shockingly high.
1988		Guardian 26 Aug. 23/2: His shockingly bad bad poppsychology.
1997		C. McPherson Weir 23: It’d be fucking shocking quiet then.
2007		Morn. Call (Allentown, PA) 18 July 2/7: I am noitcing more and more things that I consider shockingly expensive.