CONFOUND

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does confound mean? 

• CONFOUND (verb)
  The verb CONFOUND has 2 senses:

1. be confusing or perplexing to; cause to be unable to think clearly

2. mistake one thing for another

  Familiarity information: CONFOUND used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CONFOUND (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they confound    ... he / she / it confounds   
Past simple: confounded   
Past participle: confounded   
-ing form: confounding   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Be confusing or perplexing to; cause to be unable to think clearly

Classified under:

Verbs of thinking, judging, analyzing, doubting

Synonyms:

bedevil; befuddle; confound; confuse; discombobulate; fox; fuddle; throw

Context example:

This question befuddled even the teacher

Hypernyms (to "confound" is one way to...):

be (have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun))

Verb group:

confuse; disconcert; flurry; put off (cause to feel embarrassment)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "confound"):

demoralize (confuse or put into disorder)

amaze; baffle; beat; bewilder; dumbfound; flummox; get; gravel; mystify; nonplus; perplex; pose; puzzle; stick; stupefy; vex (be a mystery or bewildering to)

disorient; disorientate (cause to be lost or disoriented)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s somebody
Something ----s somebody
Something ----s something

Sentence example:

The performance is likely to confound Sue

Sense 2

Meaning:

Mistake one thing for another

Classified under:

Verbs of thinking, judging, analyzing, doubting

Synonyms:

confound; confuse

Context example:

I mistook her for the secretary

Hypernyms (to "confound" is one way to...):

misidentify; mistake (identify incorrectly)

Verb group:

blur; confuse; obnubilate; obscure (make unclear, indistinct, or blurred)

confuse; jumble; mix up (assemble without order or sense)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s somebody
Somebody ----s something PP

 Context examples 

But many of the sun’s most vital processes continue to confound scientists.

(Newest solar telescope produces first images, National Science Foundation)

Chew emphasized that this suggestion of a benefit from calcium could be due to confounding factors.

(No evidence that calcium increases risk of age-related macular degeneration, National Institutes of Health)

Pile our things on her, while I get off these confounded skates, cried Laurie, wrapping his coat round Amy, and tugging away at the straps which never seemed so intricate before.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

This, his regular eyebrows, and the rich white, and black, and brown, of his complexion—confound his complexion, and his memory!—made me think him, in spite of my misgivings, a very handsome man.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Fancy his having the insolence to confound me with the official detective force!

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The Blefuscudians, who had not the least imagination of what I intended, were at first confounded with astonishment.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

You must not confound my meaning.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

And really, after a day or two of confusion worse confounded, it was delightful by degrees to invoke order from the chaos ourselves had made.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Nay, but there is no such confounded hurry.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

How the squirrel’s tissues adapt to the cold and metabolic stress has confounded researchers.

(Researchers develop “hibernation in a dish” to study how animals adapt to the cold, National Institutes of Health)