confounded

• IPA^(key): /kənˈfaʊndɪd/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: con‧found‧ed

confounded

1. simple past and past participle of confound
   • 1831, L E L[andon], chapter VI, in Romance and Reality. , volume III, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, , →OCLC, page 124:

     Here Mrs. Higgs paused for a moment, and drew out a huge red pocket-handkerchief, with which her face was for some minutes confounded.

confounded (comparative more confounded, superlative most confounded)

1. Confused, astonished.
   • 2017 March 6, “Mark Levin on why Obama may have been spying on Trump; Reps. Gohmert, Meadows detail new health care proposal”, in Fox News‎, retrieved 2017-03-06:

     The media is very confounded right now. They're very confused. They don't know whether to trash themselves, trash their colleagues, or what.

   • 2024 September 9, Jennifer Burns, “Book Review: 'Reagan' by Max Boot”, in New York Times‎, archived from the original on 2024-09-23:

     Reagan has famously stumped his chroniclers. His official biographer, Edmund Morris, was so confounded by the assignment that he resorted to fiction, producing a muddled portrait of “Dutch” (Reagan’s longtime nickname) that was blasted by reviewers.

2. Defeated, thwarted.
   • 1674, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, lines 50–3:

     Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night
     To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
     Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe
     Confounded though immortal: […]

3. (colloquial) Extremely bad; very unpleasant; used as an intensifier.

   The confounded thing doesn't work.

   • 1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 177:

     "This is all stuff and nonsense," said the king; "I shall have to go myself, if we are to get this confounded whistle from him."

   • 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, , →OCLC, part I, page 202:

     Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.

• “confounded”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

• deconfound