How to Use perplexity in a Sentence

perplexity

noun
  • We will never solve all of the perplexities of life.
  • There was a look of perplexity on his face.
  • He stared at her in perplexity.
  • After weeks of perplexity, Dr. Nielsen woke up one night with an idea.
    New York Times, 1 July 2019
  • The closer the output is to the training data, the lower the perplexity rating.
    Benj Edwards, Ars Technica, 14 July 2023
  • Adding to the perplexity is the fact that Kaliningrad already had a stadium.
    Andrew E. Kramer, New York Times, 27 May 2018
  • Even Vox, which prides itself on explaining the news, threw up its hands in perplexity.
    David A. Graham, The Atlantic, 10 Oct. 2017
  • This air of wry perplexity turned out to be a defining Willis trait, and was central to his remarkable run of performances in the mid-to-late nineties.
    Adam Nayman, The New Yorker, 6 Apr. 2022
  • Seeing his perplexity, Annette Bening, who plays Mills’s mother in his new film, fixed his lapels and gave him a brisk, man-up pat.
    Adam Davidson, The New Yorker, 9 Jan. 2017
  • If one is in a state of perplexity and bewilderment so severe that they are paralyzed, they are said to be in tharn.
    Peter Rock, New York Times, 15 May 2018
  • That moment of intense perplexity led me to write my first book, which sought to fathom the enigma of mountain-worship.
    Willa Glickman, The New York Review of Books, 10 July 2021
  • The élan of Woolf’s prose and the shimmer of her perceptions are shot through with perplexity and grief, yet the essay is packed with moments of breathtaking insight.
    Marina Warner, WSJ, 19 Aug. 2022
  • The perplexity of any of those three results would be quite low because the prediction is fairly certain.
    Benj Edwards, Ars Technica, 14 July 2023
  • On a number of occasions Stephens was seen looking up to her team in the stands, shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders with a look of perplexity on her face.
    Sandra Harwitt, USA TODAY, 2 July 2018
  • Her perplexity at his moral hypocrisy, a recurring theme, is well-written and well-acted.
    Madeleine Kearns, National Review, 16 Dec. 2023
  • Florio wasn't the only person confused by the non-call and the perplexity of the NFL's pass-interference replay system.
    Jeremy Cluff, azcentral, 11 Nov. 2019
  • But for Arika Okrent, genial perplexity isn’t a good enough response.
    Henry Hitchings, WSJ, 1 July 2021
  • The industry has long voiced perplexity over Netflix’s org chart.
    Mia Galuppo, The Hollywood Reporter, 31 Mar. 2023
  • The voices hover and slip past one another, find peace and then tumble into more eddies of perplexity.
    New York Times, 21 Dec. 2017
  • Presented with a bottle of the stuff on an episode of his classic talk show, Cavett exhibited a kind of scandalized perplexity.
    Jason Kehe, Wired, 17 Mar. 2021
  • While Goldsmith and Lederman are better guides for the legal question, as a wonk who watched and sometimes helped expand this gray zone, my perplexity breaks down in three ways.
    Loren Dejonge Schulman, The Atlantic, 1 Nov. 2017
  • In Menderes, Javed’s request was greeted with perplexity.
    Matthew Wolfe, Harper's magazine, 10 Feb. 2019
  • The three friends approached the world’s perplexities with an intellectual eye.
    Rozina Ali, New York Times, 28 Feb. 2024
  • On the contrary, any early perplexities will come across as exotic, part of the fascination.
    The Editors, The Atlantic, 19 Aug. 2017
  • But as her shell cracks, Dern moves from perplexity to anguish to incandescent rage, never once overplaying her hand.
    Matthew Jacobs, Vulture, 3 June 2022
  • Before a breakthrough moment in last night’s episode of Westworld, Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) twitched through season 2 with a uniform expression of perplexity.
    refinery29.com, 14 May 2018
  • The legal system’s perplexity about how to regulate online content was evident from the outcome of the Gonzalez case at the 9th Circuit.
    Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 13 Oct. 2022
  • Darwin's perplexity over the matter of why humans make music is sweet, in retrospect, sweet in the way many of his other errors and examples of shortsightedness are not.
    Wyatt Mason, Esquire, 7 June 2017
  • The Mongols have been ill-served by history, the victims of an unfortunate mixture of prejudice and perplexity.
    Maxwell Carter, WSJ, 9 Apr. 2021
  • But yielding to the idea of the Holocaust’s incomparability leads us into a thicket of moral perplexities.
    Peter E. Gordon, The New York Review of Books, 7 Jan. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'perplexity.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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