confound

verb

/kənˈfaʊnd/

Etymology

From Middle English confounden (“destroy, ruin, perplex”), from Anglo-Norman cunfundre and Old French confondre, from Latin cōnfundō (“to mingle, mix together”). Related to found (“to melt (metals in a foundry)”) (but not to found (“to start”), nor to find) and to fusion.

derived from cōnfundō — “to mingle, mix together”
derived from confondre
derived from cunfundre
inherited from confounden — “destroy, ruin, perplex”

Definitions

1
To perplex or puzzle.
- And the brother of Jared being a large and mighty man, and a man highly favored of the Lord, Jared, his brother, said unto him: Cry unto the Lord, that he will not confound us that we may not understand our words.
To stun or amaze.
To fail to see the difference
To fail to see the difference; to mix up; to confuse right and wrong.
›+ 7 more definitionsshow fewer
1. 4
  To make something worse.
  - Don't confound the situation by yelling.
2. 5
  To combine in a confused fashion
  To combine in a confused fashion; to mingle so as to make the parts indistinguishable.
  - There the freſh and ſalt water would meete and be confounded together, […]
3. 6
  To cause to be ashamed
  To cause to be ashamed; to abash.
  - His actions confounded the skeptics.
4. 7
  To defeat, to frustrate, to thwart.
  - But God hath choſen the fooliſh things of the woꝛld, to confound the wiſe: and God hath choſen the weake things of the woꝛld, to confound the things which are mighty:
  - O Lord our God ariſe, / Scatter his enemies, / And make them fall: / Confound their politics, / Fruſtrate their knaviſh tricks, / On him our hopes we fix, / O ſave us all.
5. 8
  To damn (a mild oath).
  - Confound you!
  - Confound the lady!
  - "Number 43 is no better, Doctor," said the head-warder, in a slightly reproachful accent, looking in round the corner of my door. "Confound 43!" I responded from behind the pages of the Australian Sketcher.
6. 9
  To destroy, ruin, or devastate
  To destroy, ruin, or devastate; to bring to ruination.
  - To mortal men, he with his horrid crew / Lay vanquiſht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe / Confounded though immortal: But his doom[…]
  - Imagine twenty thouſand of them breaking into the midſt of an European Army, confounding the Ranks, overturning the Carriages, battering the Warriors Faces into Mummy, by terrible Yerks from their hinder Hoofs.
7. A confounding variable.

The neighborhood

Derived

baffound, confoundable, confoundation, confounder, confounding factor, confounding variable, confound it, confoundment, deconfound, dumbfound, reconfound, unconfound

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at confound. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

A definitional loop anchored at confound. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

7 hops · closes at confound

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA