Maze

How to spell maze

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce maze

What does maze mean?

1. nounA complex, confusing network of paths or passages designed so that finding the way through is difficult.
2. nounA bewildering tangle of rules, ideas, or procedures that is hard to navigate.

Maze in a sentence

• The children got happily lost in the hedge maze at the country estate.

• The tax form was a maze of clauses and cross-references.

• The old hospital was a maze of corridors that confused even the staff.

• Applicants had to work through a maze of forms before approval.

Where does maze come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Maze comes from Middle English mase, which originally meant a state of delirium, bewilderment, or delusion rather than a physical puzzle. It is closely tied to the verb amasen, the ancestor of modern 'amaze', whose root sense was to stupefy or daze someone so that they lost their bearings. The exact older source is uncertain, though it is generally held to be of native English (Old English) stock, possibly connected to words meaning to confuse or to dream. Over the medieval period the meaning shifted from the inner confusion of the mind to the outer thing that causes it: a deliberately confusing network of paths and hedges, the sense that dominates today. That shared ancestry with 'amaze' is a handy memory hook, and it also explains why a maze is spelled with a 'z' while its homophone maize, the cereal plant, came much later from Spanish maiz.

How the word is built

• maze (single root; from Middle English mase 'delirium, delusion', related to amaze)

Words that sound like maze

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• maize: A tall cereal plant grown for its large yellow grain, also called corn; the grain itself.