Puzzled

How to spell puzzled

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce puzzled

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does puzzled mean?

1. adjectiveConfused or unable to understand something.
2. verbPast tense of puzzle: confused or baffled someone, or thought hard about something.

Puzzled in a sentence

• adjective

  The accountant looked puzzled by the missing entries in the ledger.

• verb

  The sudden drop in sales puzzled the entire management team.

• adjective

  A puzzled expression crossed her face when the meeting was cancelled.

• verb

  She puzzled over the crossword clue for nearly an hour.

Where does puzzled come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

This is the past form of the verb 'puzzle', which surfaced in English in the late 1500s with the meaning 'to confound or bewilder'. The deeper origin of 'puzzle' is genuinely obscure and has never been settled; lexicographers usually mark it as of uncertain derivation. One popular suggestion links it to the older verb 'pose', in the sense of 'to baffle with a hard question', from which a frequentative 'pos-le' could have developed, but this remains speculative rather than proven. The noun sense, a problem or toy designed to test ingenuity, came later in the 1600s. Because the root is so uncertain, the doubled 'zz' and the soft '-le' ending are simply features to memorise rather than echoes of any traceable foreign spelling.

How the word is built

• puzzle (to confuse, perplex)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)