Bamboozlement

Bamboozlement

Most all our word meaning confused come from verbs, but not all those verbs mean to confuse.

The words confound & confuse both come from Latin — to pour together.

confound made its way to English in the 1300s, meaning to condemn, curse, disconcert or perplex. Confused appeared in English in Middle English, but it wasn’t until the 1500s that we dropped the final -d to create the verb confuse.

Addled , addle-pated, & addle-headed made their way into English in the 1600s from an Old English verb which meant become putrid. The word was often applied to bad eggs, which are sometimes stinky (putrid) & sometimes empty, & it’s the empty meaning that moved addled toward its modern meaning of idle, confused, muddled or unsound.

Bewildered came from the verb bewilder, which came from Old English and appeared in the 1600s. Its literal meaning was to be led into the wilderness, though the figurative meaning confounded or confused almost immediately eclipsed the literal meaning.

We didn’t have the words flummox & flummoxed until 1837, & nobody’s sure where they came from.

In the 1720s the word muzzy appeared, mostly likely a form of the word mossy.

The year 1759 brought us the word muddle-headed, from an old Germanic verb that meant to destroy the clarity of. That same root also gave us mud.

Baffle appears to have come from a French verb which meant to abuse or hoodwink. This word traveled through Scottish, where it meant to disgrace. By the 1540s, English speakers appear to have associated confusion with disgrace, and the words baffle, baffled, & bafflement were born.

An Old French word & an Old English word were slapped together in 1735 to come up with the verb bemuse, to stupefy, & so we have bemused.

In the early 1800s, some Americans amused themselves by making fun of Latin by creating ridiculous, Latin-sounding words. Discombobulate & confusticate came about because of this practice.

And in 1703 bamboozle showed up in English, most likely from a Scottish verb meaning to confound or perplex.

Bamboozled or inspired by any of this? Please say so in the comments (which I still can’t reply to — which not only bamboozles me, but confusticates me.)

Big thanks to ANNE LORENZEN for inspiring this post, & to this week’s sources:  Merriam Webster, Wordnik, Collins Dictionary, & Etymonline.