Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To confuse or trouble with uncertainty or doubt.
- transitive verb To make confusedly intricate; complicate.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Intricate; difficult.
- noun A difficulty; an entanglement; something hard to understand; a perplexity.
- To make intricate; involve; entangle; make complicated and difficult to be understood or unraveled.
- To embarrass; puzzle; distract; bewilder; trouble with suspense, anxiety, or ambiguity.
- Synonyms To complicate, tangle, snarl.
- Puzzle, etc. (see
embarrass ), confuse, harass, pose, nonplus, put to a stand, mystify.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective obsolete Intricate; difficult.
- transitive verb To involve; to entangle; to make intricate or complicated, and difficult to be unraveled or understood.
- transitive verb To embarrass; to puzzle; to distract; to bewilder; to confuse; to trouble with ambiguity, suspense, or anxiety.
- transitive verb To plague; to vex; to tormen.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb transitive To cause to feel
baffled ; topuzzle . - adjective obsolete
intricate ;difficult
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb be a mystery or bewildering to
- verb make more complicated
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Thus, our "unfinished feeling" represents in itself an obscure demand for a resolution of the unadjusted; it corresponds to that inner compulsion which operates upon the imperfect consciousness of the dreamer, or upon the mentality of any person seeking the solution of a problem or "perplex," either asleep, or awake -- as I trust you all still remain.
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What I am going to write I know will only perplex you, and yet I must of course tell you.
Letter 161 2009
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They're complicated, and the complications both perplex and suit them.
James Wallenstein: An Interview About The Arriviste James Wallenstein 2011
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They're complicated, and the complications both perplex and suit them.
James Wallenstein: An Interview About The Arriviste James Wallenstein 2011
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It doesn't help that we live in a time with infinite choices, information and potential directions -- which can perplex the most focused people.
Ilana Donna Arazie: Live From Your Gut Ilana Donna Arazie 2011
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It would be useless and unkind to perplex you with my literary troubles.
Letter 147 2009
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The resulting image is compelling, perplex and idiosyncratic; a pagan Catholic Cirque du Soleil.
John Seed: Matthew Couper: A Devotional Painter in Las Vegas John Seed 2011
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Despite its prevalence, the condition still seems to perplex many people.
Glenn D. Braunstein, M.D.: Understanding Stuttering M.D. Glenn D. Braunstein 2011
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The resulting image is compelling, perplex and idiosyncratic; a pagan Catholic Cirque du Soleil.
John Seed: Matthew Couper: A Devotional Painter in Las Vegas John Seed 2011
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If there ever is a message from SETI it will be an alien one cup coffee maker brand name that will perplex the scientific community for centuries.
Prolagus commented on the word perplex
See also perplexed.
August 29, 2008
TankHughes commented on the word perplex
I remember playing a word search computer game with my friend when I was young, and we got all of them except this one. "Well there's purple, but it's with an e!" "No, it's gotta be something else!" Pretty sure a mom finished it for us. So now I read it as PERPLE-X.
December 15, 2015