befuddled

adjective

be·​fud·​dled bi-ˈfə-dᵊld 

bē-

: utterly confused or puzzled : deeply perplexed

… somebody may be so befuddled and self-destructive as to miss the point entirely.

—Anne B. Fisher

I just asked her to please talk to my agent, who understood what was going on, not me. … frankly, I didn't know what to do, or whomto believe. I was totally befuddled.

—John Nichols

Synonyms

• addle
• addled
• addlepated
• bedeviled
• befogged
• bemused
• bewildered
• bushed [chiefly Australian]
• confounded
• confused
• dazed
• distracted
• dizzy
• dopey
• dopy
• fogged
• mixed-up
• muddleheaded
• muzzy
• pixilated
• pixillated
• punch-drunk
• punchy
• raddled
• shell-shocked
• silly
• slaphappy
• spaced-out
• spaced
• spacey
• spacy
• stunned
• stupefied
• zonked
• zonked-out

Examples of befuddled in a Sentence

the perennially befuddled professor was always forgetting where she'd left her glasses

Recent Examples on the Web

My friends were confused by my abrupt stop and the frightened and befuddled look on my face — except for one, whose eyes were also bulging wide. —Thomas Wheatley, Axios, 31 Oct. 2024

After intermission, Davis becomes Poirot, while Hendrickson takes on the role of somewhat befuddled wingman in Arthur Hastings. —Rob Hubbard, Twin Cities, 13 Oct. 2024

The book is filled with humor, canny allusion, beauty, and a profundity born of glimpsing fleeting human lives from the outside—through eyes that have seen epochs yet nonetheless remain befuddled. —The New Yorker, 30 Sep. 2024

The Ukrainians to their credit shrugged off Russia’s apparent artillery superiority in Kursk, correctly surmising that befuddled gunners are useless gunners. —David Axe, Forbes, 28 Sep. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1838, in the meaning defined above