Confuse
adj, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 to puzzle, perplex, baffle, bewilder (somebody); to afflict by being complicated, contradictory, or otherwise difficult to understand transitive
"It confused me when I went to the office and nobody was there, but then I realised it was Sunday."
- 2 mistake one thing for another wordnet
- 3 To mix up, muddle up (one thing with another); to mistake (one thing for another). transitive
"People who say "hola" to Italians are confusing Italian with Spanish."
- 4 make unclear, indistinct, or blurred wordnet
- 5 To mix thoroughly; to confound; to disorder. transitive
"The dense fog utterly confused traffic on the highway."
Show 6 more definitions
- 6 be confusing or perplexing to; cause to be unable to think clearly wordnet
- 7 To make uneasy and ashamed; to embarrass. dated, transitive
- 8 assemble without order or sense wordnet
- 9 To rout; discomfit. obsolete, transitive
- 10 cause to feel embarrassment wordnet
- 11 To be confused. intransitive
- 1 Synonym of confused. obsolete
"Moꝛe ouer take away oꝛdre from all thynges / what ſhulde than remayne? certes nothynge finally / except ſome man wolde imagine eftſones / Chaos: whiche of ſome is expounde a cõfuse mixture: […]"
Example
More examples"Never confuse opinions with facts."
Etymology
Back-formation from confused, from Middle English confused (“frustrated, ruined”), from Anglo-Norman confus, from Latin cōnfūsus, past participle of cōnfundō.
From Middle English confus, from Old French confus, from Latin cōnfūsus, past participle of cōnfundō.
Related phrases
More for "confuse"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.