Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Filled with confusion or bewilderment; puzzled.
- adj. Full of complications or difficulty; involved.
Wiktionary
- adj. Confused or puzzled.
- adj. Bewildered.
- v. Simple past tense and past participle of perplex.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Entangled, involved, or confused; hence, embarrassd; puzzled; doubtful; anxious.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. full of difficulty or confusion or bewilderment
Etymologies
- Middle English, from perplex, confused, from Old French perplexe, from Latin perplexus : per-, per- + plexus, past participle of plectere, to entwine; see plek- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The redhead, wearing a purple tank top and black leather pants underneath her unbelted black trench, dropped into a crouch in front of a crypt, her expression perplexed as she studied the path.”
““Ms. Sexton,” he said, his expression perplexed and troubled.”
“She traced the tip of a finger over the edge of the box, her expression perplexed.”
“Reporting from Reno- The woman slouched on the steps of the rundown motel, her hair mussed, her pinkish outfit rumpled, her expression perplexed.”
“In an economy that is still as rocky as the Grand Canyon, many people remain perplexed about what they should do if they find themselves without a job or on the verge of losing one soon.”
The Washington Post: To cope with a lower income, short-term savings take priority
“Some former Morgan Stanley executives remain perplexed by Zhu, who they say understood finance and investment banking, but worked odd late hours and appeared to rely too much on his father's political ties.”
The Huffington Post: Wall Street's Latest Gold Rush? The Booming China Market
“But then again, I never viewed Obama as a liberal and I remain perplexed that others do since his every action says otherwise. —”
The Early Word: Obama Faces Liberal Angst - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com
“While I deplore and condemn the disrespect shown by some Obama bloggers, I remain perplexed that, no matter what Obama says or does, for some Hillary supporters he is ALWAYS AND FOREVER, "vile and hateful.”
“Some non-conservatives remain perplexed by that fact, but the totality of McCain's deviations from the conservative mainstream will be tough to overcome in the primaries.”
Sound Politics: Mitt Romney for President: Part I, the Competition
“He marvelled at the place and the goodliness of its fashion, but sensed no sound of speaker and saw no living soul and stood in perplexed surprise, looking right and left and knowing not whither he should wend.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘perplexed’.
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Confused/Surprised Words
Words that describe being in this state are quite simply wonderful.
astonished, flabbergasted, bamboozled, thunderstruck, dumbstruck, perplexed, addlepated, bewildered, dumbfounded, perturbed, befuddled, confounded
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Words To Use In Creative Writing
hag-ridden, light-heeled, wendigo, longshanks, fatuous, insipid, sodden, bulging, sycophantic, uncourtly, gauche, assuasive and 102 more...
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ecbrenner's list
flatline, luddism, apocalipstick, muttsucker, leviathan of fore..., flint, coryphaeus, donnybrook, bandwidth, bagpipe the mizen, cheesed off, asterism and 525 more...
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Personal Vocabulary List
All my favourite words that I come across!
veritable, incongruence, rigamorole, letcherous, revolting, repulsive, reputrid, rapatious, forays, guise, placate, paradigm and 1162 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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know-it-all
eunuch, couvade, ecclesiastes, enigma, inevitable, crucible, genteel, bedlam, baculum, scapulimancy, atrophy, smut and 170 more...
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mango22's Words
avalanche, apple, arrividerci, awry, adamant, asunder, barter, beloved, calm, cataclysmic, catastrophe, coat and 143 more...
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feeling words
twitterpated, loquacious, ambiguous, pensive, sluggish, anxious, adventurous, curious, abandoned, absent-minded, abrasive, abused and 653 more...
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Mimi
sober, rhetoric, oratory, ergo, venom, diaphragm, Medieval, piety, incognito, ruse, calamity, evidence and 251 more...
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cloudjuice's Words
schadenfreude, sordid, promulgate, erratic, erroneous, amalgamate, sesquipedalian, incongruous, psychosis, etymology, simulacrum, serendipity and 988 more...
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NakedFringe's Words
masticate, chamber, orchid, mandolin, yellow, pomegranate, conundrum, paradox, gyrate, calamitous, opalescent, cacophony and 533 more...
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Fun Words
Words that have funny meanings or are just fun to say.
kumquat, chimichanga, sarsparilla, rutabaga, rumpus, flummox, encrusted, prestidigitation, pomegranate, preposterous, dentiloquist, sepulchre and 323 more...
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My Self-Descriptors: A Mirror of Text
Read this list, and read it well. When you finish, you'll know me better than my mother. That is, unless she reads this list too.
libertarian, unorthodox, unfinished, sincere, frugal, lanky, introspective, critical, laid-back, taciturn, lexiphilic, kindly and 115 more...
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my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
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2011 July
New words
correspondent, promulgate, transgress, trite, ravine, corespondent, contrivance, contrive, expedient, conducive, clairvoyance, difform and 184 more...
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SAT
abandon,extreme e..., abash,to humiliate, abate,to lessen, abbreviate,to sho..., abridge, abdicate,to forma..., aberration,depart..., abnormality, abet,to encourage, abhor,to hate, abide,to follow o..., abject,utterly ho... and 2228 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for perplexed.
qroqqa An interesting point. The OED notes that Latin had no verb *perplectere, only the adjective perplex-us, which looks like it's the past participle of such a verb, but might instead have come from per- "thoroughly" + the past participle plex-us of plect-ere "plait, interweave, entangle".
The English adjective was originally 'perplex', with the other words (verb and 'perplexed') derived from it.
Aug 29, 2008
Prolagus After reading the conversation on rumoured, I just thought this one might interest you as well.
A similar reflection might be done about perplexed, I guess, at least in Italian.
Some (rather knowledgeable) people try to use the verb perplimere (something like to perplime) as the infinitive of perplexed.
The Accademia della Crusca states that it doesn't exist (it was made up for a comical TV show in the 90's), but as a back-formation it's very interesting indeed.
Is perplex a back-formation as well? Aug 29, 2008