PUZZLING • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Puzzling

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/pˈəzəlɪŋ/ /pˈəzlɪŋ/ Listen

verb

puzzle v. t. (past & past part. puzzled; pres. part. puzzling)

To perplex; to confuse; to embarrass; to put to a stand; to nonplus. "A very shrewd disputant in those points is dexterous in puzzling others." "He is perpetually puzzled and perplexed amidst his own blunders."

To make intricate; to entangle. "They disentangle from the puzzled skein." "The ways of Heaven are dark and intricate, Puzzled in mazes, and perplexed with error."

To solve by ingenuity, as a puzzle; followed by out; as, to puzzle out a mystery.

Synonyms: To embarrass; perplex; confuse; bewilder; confound. See Embarrass.

Puzzle v. i.

To be bewildered, or perplexed. "A puzzling fool, that heeds nothing."

To work, as at a puzzle; as, to puzzle over a problem.

See images of 'Puzzling'

Etymology of 'Puzzling'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Puzzling" Quotes from Famous Books

... Queen Dido, which were scattered to the four winds of Heaven, I fear; nor could I discover a reasonably good bust of Homer; but respectable substitutes are provided, and some of them have the great merit of puzzling all beholders to tell to whom they belong, which I believe was the great characteristic of ...

— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... words two or three times, "there goes two white horses;" but he could not find out what was wrong, and after puzzling for a long while, he was obliged to give it up, and his papa said,—"Suppose you had been talking about those horses before you saw them go by, should you have said, 'there they goes?'" "No," ...

— More Seeds of Knowledge; Or, Another Peep at Charles. • Julia Corner

... pleasant to think of one's puzzling the organised wisdom of so superior a planet as this Utopia, this moral monster State my Frankenstein of reasoning has made, and to that pitch we have come. When we are next in the presence of our Lucerne official, he has the bearing of a man who faces a mystification beyond his ...

— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... much which you found there, relating to the right conduct of life, you had already found scattered through the books of the Greek and Roman moralists. You would be startled by no strange or appalling truth. You would turn over their leaves in vain in search of such dark and puzzling ingenuities as try the wits of those who resort to the pages of the Timaeus. A child can understand the essential truths of Christ. And the value of Christianity consists not in this, that it puts forth a new, ingenious, and intricate system of philosophy, ...

— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... a puzzling question to decide just where to draw the line in separating foreign from what we may call current American folk-lore. The traditions and superstitions that a mother as a child or girl heard in a foreign land, ...

— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various

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