Puzzling

How to spell puzzling

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce puzzling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does puzzling mean?

1. adjectiveDifficult to understand or explain; causing confusion.

Puzzling in a sentence

• The accountant found the missing figure deeply puzzling.

• There was a puzzling delay before the train finally departed.

Where does puzzling come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

This word is the present-participle and adjective form of the verb 'puzzle', which appeared in English in the late 1500s meaning 'to confuse, perplex, or bewilder'. The origin of 'puzzle' itself is genuinely uncertain, and lexicographers have never settled it; one common suggestion links it to the older verb 'pose' in the sense of 'to baffle with a hard question', from which a frequentative form may have developed. The familiar meaning of an actual jigsaw or brain-teaser 'puzzle' came later, in the 1800s, growing out of the idea of something laid out to be worked through. The adjective 'puzzling' simply describes anything that produces this state of confusion. Because the base ends in a silent 'e' that drops before '-ing', and because the word carries a doubled 'z' that adults sometimes second-guess, the spelling can trip up confident writers.

How the word is built

• puzzle (to perplex)
• -ing (adjective/participle suffix)