confusing

1. 1
   adjective

   Difficult to understand, especially because something lacks order or feels chaotic.

   Like trying to read a map while holding it upside down.

   The movie's timeline was confusing, jumping between decades without warning.

   New employees often find the company's filing system confusing.

   Similarbewildering, perplexing, puzzling, baffling, unclear

   Oppositeclear, straightforward, simple, understandable

   Note

   Here the participle has become a true adjective, and grammar tells you which one you have. The adjective grades (more confusing, most confusing), accepts very or really, and takes no object: a section of a book is really confusing. Once an object follows, as in a writer confusing readers, you are looking at the verb form instead.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of confuse.

   He is confusing two different historical events in his essay.

   Stop confusing the issue with irrelevant details.

   Note

   The verb form nearly always has something on the receiving end, because confuse is almost always transitive. Its commonest pattern pairs two things, confusing one event with another, and there it means mistaking rather than bewildering. As a gerund it heads a noun phrase: confusing the issue helps nobody. The older meanings of confuse, "embarrass" and "rout," now turn up only in dated or obsolete writing.

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