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head-scratching

adj
/ˈhɛdskɹatʃɪŋ/UK/ˈhɛdskɹætʃɪŋ/US

Etymology

head + scratching, from the fact that many people scratch the side of their head when confused.

Definitions

  1. Confusing, perplexing, puzzling.

    • For someone who professed such deep respect for numbers, Plato certainly used some head-scratching ones in his Atlantis story. The dates don't match up even remotely with ancient history.

  2. Confusion.

    • […] Milly got out of her basket to reconsider the matter. It took some deliberation and head scratching to decide the best method; […]
    • [O]ne morning I just started writing about how Judy met JFK in the winter of '60, and it seemed to go pretty well – better, anyway, than the false starts and head scratchings that were all I had to show thus far.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for head-scratching. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

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