Baffled

How to spell baffled

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce baffled

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does baffled mean?

1. adjectiveCompletely confused or unable to understand something.
2. verbPast tense of baffle: to have confused or frustrated someone completely.

Baffled in a sentence

• adjective

  The engineers were baffled by the recurring fault in the new system.

• verb

  The unexpected results baffled the entire research team.

• adjective

  She stared at the cryptic instructions with a baffled expression.

• verb

  His sudden change of plan baffled everyone in the office.

Where does baffled come from?

Language of origin: Other

The base verb 'baffle' first appears in English in the sixteenth century, and its earliest recorded meaning was surprisingly harsh: to disgrace publicly, particularly to humiliate a knight who had broken his word by hanging his portrait upside down. The exact source is genuinely uncertain, which is why dictionaries hedge here, but the leading candidates are the Scots word 'bauchle', meaning to subject to public ridicule, and the Old French 'bafouer', meaning to mock or deceive. Over the following century the sense softened from outright humiliation toward thwarting, foiling, or frustrating someone's efforts, and from there it slid into the modern meaning of leaving a person utterly puzzled. The form 'baffled' simply adds the standard '-ed' ending, and because the verb ends in a single stressed vowel plus a single consonant cluster the 'l' is doubled by the usual rule, giving the double 'f' from the root and the doubled consonant pattern that trips up some writers.

How the word is built

• baffle (to confuse, frustrate)
• -ed (past tense / adjective suffix)