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Perplexing   /pərplˈɛksɪŋ/   Listen
Perplexing

adjective
1.
Lacking clarity of meaning; causing confusion or perplexity.  Synonyms: confusing, puzzling.  "Perplexing to someone who knew nothing about it" , "A puzzling statement"



Perplex

verb
(past & past part. perplexed; pres. part. perplexing)
1.
Be a mystery or bewildering to.  Synonyms: amaze, baffle, beat, bewilder, dumbfound, flummox, get, gravel, mystify, nonplus, pose, puzzle, stick, stupefy, vex.  "Got me--I don't know the answer!" , "A vexing problem" , "This question really stuck me"
2.
Make more complicated.  Synonym: complicate.  Antonym: simplify.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Perplexing" Quotes from Famous Books



... day of their marriage, most like a wilful, haughty, angry boy, but not like a profligate. On other points he is not so easily defended; and Shakspeare, we see, has not defended, but corrected him. The latter part of the play is more perplexing than pleasing. We do not, indeed, repine with Dr. Johnson, that Bertram, after all his misdemeanors, is "dismissed to happiness;" but, not withstanding the clever defence that has been made for him, he has ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... for the presidency was John C. Fremont, and there was a great stir and bustle among the people who were supposed to support him, but Buchanan won easily, and at once found himself in the midst of the most perplexing difficulties. Kansas was in a state of civil war; two days after his inauguration the Supreme Court handed down the famous Dred Scott decision, declaring the right of any slave-holder to take his slaves as property into any territory; while the young ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... their lives men no doubt follow the line of least resistance, and Simon Newcomb here we may be sure was no exception; thus he chose to deal in his work with the heaviest and most perplexing problems with which the human intellect can engage. I do not attempt to describe or estimate what he achieved. Only a few select minds in his generation were capable of that. At his death the tributes of those who had ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... better, and I ride about again. My office here is no sinecure, so many parties and difficulties of every kind; but I will do what I can. Prince Mavrocordato is an excellent person, and does all in his power; but his situation is perplexing in the extreme. Still we have great hopes of the success of the contest. You will hear, however, more of public news from plenty of quarters: for I have ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... conversely a ground of censure—rendering (in the opinions of these three members) further military proceedings absolutely necessary. They,—who are most aware of the unconstitutional frame of this Court or Board, and of the perplexing situation in which its members must have found themselves placed,—will have the least difficulty in excusing this inconsistency: it is however to be regretted; particularly in the instance of the Earl of Moira;—who, disapproving both of the Convention and Armistice, has assigned for that disapprobation ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth


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