confuse
Formsconfuses, confusing, confused
Formsconfuses, confusing, confused
- 1To puzzle or bewilder someone, especially by being complicated, contradictory, or otherwise hard to understand.
The conflicting reports only served to confuse the investigators.
The lecturer's vague answers confused most of the students.
Similarbewilder, puzzle, baffle, perplex, mystify
Oppositeenlighten
Note
A verb made backward from its own participle. English had confused first, from Middle English confused ('frustrated, ruined'), and confuse was later formed from it. In this sense the subject is the puzzling thing, such as an empty office on a Sunday or a strange offer, and the object is the person left puzzled. That person's state is then described with confused, the very form the verb grew from.
- 2To mix one thing up with another, or to mistake one thing for another.
Tourists frequently confuse the two museums because their names are so similar.
He confused the salt for sugar and ruined the whole batch.
Similarmuddle, mistake, conflate
Oppositedistinguish, differentiate, separate
Note
Here the confusion is in what the speaker does, not in how anyone feels. The usual frame is confuse one thing with another: people who greet Italians with "hola" are confusing Italian with Spanish. The object is the pair being mixed up. That sets this sense apart from the "bewilder someone" meaning, where the object is the person left puzzled. Confuse … for also occurs, borrowing the pattern of mistake … for.
- 3To mix thoroughly so that all order breaks down; to throw into disorder.
The flood confused the carefully sorted records into a single sodden heap.
Careless handling can confuse the colored threads beyond sorting.
Similarjumble, muddle, scramble, tangle, disarrange
- 4To become or be in a state of confusion.
My grandfather confuses easily these days, so we keep his medication schedule as simple as possible.
Drivers tend to confuse at intersections where the signs contradict each other.
Less common meanings
- 5To make someone feel uneasy and ashamed; to embarrass.
Their warm praise confused him so much that he looked away.
Open compliments tend to confuse her into an awkward silence.
Similarembarrass, fluster, abash, disconcert, discomfit
Oppositereassure
Note
An older use in which the trouble is social rather than mental: praise, attention or a sudden kindness leaves someone flustered and ashamed. Because it is dated, a modern reader is likely to hear the 'puzzle' meaning instead and picture bewilderment where blushing was meant. In older prose, read it as embarrass. In your own writing, embarrass says it without the risk.
- 6To rout or utterly defeat; to throw an enemy into disorder.
Note
A battlefield use, now obsolete. To confuse an enemy was to break its ranks and drive it off, much as the 'throw into disorder' meaning does to things. Modern readers will take the word as 'puzzle,' so a defeat would sound like mere bafflement. When you meet it in old accounts of fighting, read it as rout. In current writing, rout or scatter carries the sense.
- 7Bewildered; in a muddled or disordered state of mind.
Similarconfused
Note
An adjective with its own French line of descent, from Old French confus, rather than a clipping of the verb. It mostly describes things, not minds. Thomas Elyot calls chaos 'a confuse mixture' in 1531. Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie (1589) finds barbarous languages 'most confuse and indistinct', and Daniel Waterland still writes 'a confuse general way' in 1737. It compared as more confuse and most confuse.
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Practice
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Origins
A back-formation from 'confused', which came from Middle English 'confused' ('frustrated, ruined'), from Anglo-Norman 'confus', from Latin 'cōnfūsus', the past participle of 'cōnfundō'.
From Middle English 'confus', from Old French 'confus', from Latin 'cōnfūsus', the past participle of 'cōnfundō'.