Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To cause to be unable to think with clarity or act with intelligence or understanding; bewilder or perplex.
  • intransitive verb Archaic To cause to feel embarrassment.
  • intransitive verb To fail to differentiate (one person or thing) from another.
  • intransitive verb To make more complex or difficult to understand.
  • intransitive verb To make something unclear or incomprehensible.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Mixed; confused: as, “a confuse cry,”
  • Perplexed; confounded; disconcerted.
  • To mingle together, as two or more things, ideas, etc., which are properly separate and distinct; combine without order or clearness; throw together indiscriminately; derange; disorder; jumble.
  • To perplex or derange the mind or ideas of; embarrass; disconcert; bewilder; confound.
  • To fuse together; blend into one.
  • To take one idea or thing for another.
  • To become mixed up; become involved.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To mix or blend so that things can not be distinguished; to jumble together; to confound; to render indistinct or obscure; ; to confuse one's vision.
  • transitive verb To perplex; to disconcert; to abash; to cause to lose self-possession.
  • adjective obsolete Mixed; confounded.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To thoroughly mix; to confound; to disorder.
  • verb obsolete To rout; discomfit.
  • verb To mix up; to puzzle; to bewilder.
  • verb To make uneasy and ashamed; to embarrass.
  • verb To mistake one thing for another.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb assemble without order or sense
  • verb make unclear, indistinct, or blurred
  • verb cause to feel embarrassment
  • verb be confusing or perplexing to; cause to be unable to think clearly
  • verb mistake one thing for another

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English confusen, from Old French confus, perplexed, from Latin cōnfūsus, past participle of cōnfundere, to mix together; see confound.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Back formation from Middle English confused ("frustrated, ruined"), from Anglo-Norman confus, from Latin confusus, past participle of confundō.

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