baffling
Britishadjective
Other Word Forms
- bafflingly adverb
Explanation
If something is baffling, it's completely confusing or mysterious. You might find your friend's hatred for the taste of chocolate utterly baffling. A good mystery novel begins with a baffling crime — one that seems at first nearly impossible to solve. You might also find your math homework baffling or wander around the baffling snarl of streets in a city with no idea where you are. The earliest meaning of baffling was nautical, describing winds blowing in all directions. It comes from the verb baffle, which first meant "to disgrace" before it came to mean "to confuse."
Vocabulary lists containing baffling
This Week in Words: January 27 - February 2, 2018
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
What is more baffling than the botched decision-making at the time is that officials have been going through what happened behind closed doors for months.
From BBC • Apr. 18, 2026
Seen through this lens, contemporary phenomena that appear baffling begin to make sense.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 2, 2026
It’s baffling, to say the least, that Gabbard did not recuse herself from this matter.
From Salon • Mar. 5, 2026
But what was really baffling was Cronin’s claim that the questioner was raising his voice.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 18, 2026
For historians of technology, the Phaistos disk is even more baffling; its estimated date of 1700 B.C. makes it by far the earliest printed document in the world.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
