Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To confuse; perplex.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To confuse; to fluster; to flabbergast.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb be a mystery or bewildering to

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Probably of English dialectal origin.]

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Examples

Comments

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  • FlummOX

    May 5, 2008

  • a funny word

    May 11, 2008

  • To confuse; perplex. stress on flum-

    May 11, 2008

  • ha! beat ya to it! on set phasers to...

    July 3, 2009

  • Hmmmm, I can fix that ...

    July 3, 2009

  • Tonight Jewish kids will light the menorah, spin their dreidels and get their presents, but Hanukkah is the most adult of holidays. It commemorates an event in which the good guys did horrible things, the bad guys did good things and in which everybody is flummoxed by insoluble conflicts that remain with us today. It’s a holiday that accurately reflects how politics is, how history is, how life is.

    David Brooks, "The Hanukkah Story". The New York Times, December 11, 2009.

    December 14, 2009