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Baffling   /bˈæfəlɪŋ/  /bˈæflɪŋ/   Listen
verb
Baffle  v. t.  (past & past part. baffled; pres. part. baffling)  
1.
To cause to undergo a disgraceful punishment, as a recreant knight. (Obs.) "He by the heels him hung upon a tree, And baffled so, that all which passed by The picture of his punishment might see."
2.
To check by shifts and turns; to elude; to foil. "The art that baffles time's tyrannic claim."
3.
To check by perplexing; to disconcert, frustrate, or defeat; to thwart. "A baffled purpose." "A suitable scripture ready to repel and baffle them all." "Calculations so difficult as to have baffled, until within a... recent period, the most enlightened nations." "The mere intricacy of a question should not baffle us."
Baffling wind (Naut.), one that frequently shifts from one point to another.
Synonyms: To balk; thwart; foil; frustrate; defeat.


Baffle  v. i.  
1.
To practice deceit. (Obs.)
2.
To struggle against in vain; as, a ship baffles with the winds. (R.)


adjective
Baffling  adj.  Frustrating; discomfiting; disconcerting; as, baffling currents, winds, tasks.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Baffling" Quotes from Famous Books



... the streets, he seized upon and how he made this his own. I tried to determine what were the relationships he used to order his experiences. Fortunately for the purposes of writing stories I did not have to get behind the baffling eyes and the inscrutable sounds of a small baby. Yet I learned much for understanding the twos by watching even through the first months. What "the great, big, blooming, buzzing confusion" (as James describes it) ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... misunderstanding; the man hit was to have thought that his opponent would fire only one shot, the man who escaped would express deepest regret, but maintain that the arrangement had been for two successive shots. I had very little doubt that these arrangements for baffling inconvenient inquiry would prove thoroughly adequate. For the rest, I made up a packet for Varvilliers containing a present for Coralie. To make any other preparations would not have been fair to Wetter; for my death, if it happened, must ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... hair that was a libel on her fifty-five years and girlish step. Nobody in Lindsay ever felt very well acquainted with Mrs. Falconer, in spite of the fact that she had lived among them forty years. She kept between her and her world a fine, baffling reserve which no one had ever been able to penetrate. It was known that she had had a bitter sorrow in her life, but she never made any reference to it, and most people in Lindsay had forgotten it. Some foolish ones even supposed that Mrs. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the members of the class and shall be published in the autumn following each reunion. lf these records are accurately kept, and if copies are placed on file in the College Library, accessible to investigators, the next historian of Wellesley will be spared the baffling paucity of information concerning the alumnae which has ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... domain. It seems natural to see the French women, and even the Italian women at work. Man is more or less the leisure class on the continent. But London is a man's town if on earth there is one, and to see women everywhere in London is a curious and baffling sight. ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White


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