Discomfit
verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 To embarrass (someone) greatly; to confuse; to perplex; to disconcert. transitive
"Don't worry. Your joke did not really discomfit me."
- 2 cause to lose one's composure wordnet
- 3 To defeat the plans or hopes of; to frustrate; disconcert. rare, transitive
"In these disguises, Maitland argued, he would certainly avoid recognition, and so discomfit any mischief planned by the enemies of Margaret."
- 4 To defeat completely; to rout. archaic, transitive
"Claudius therefore leauing this Ile, paſſed into Pomonia the chiefeſt of all the Orkenies, where diſcomfiting ſuch as appeared abroad to make reſiſtance, he beſieged the king of thoſe Iles named Ganus, within a caſtell where he was withdrawen, [...]"
Example
More examples"Don't worry. Your joke did not really discomfit me."
Etymology
From Old French desconfit, past participle of desconfire (“to undo, to destroy”), from des- (“completely”), from Latin dis- + confire (“to make”), from Latin conficio (“to finish up, to destroy”), from com- (“with, together”) + facio (“to do, to make”). Later sense of “to embarrass, to disconcert” due to confusion with unrelated discomfort.
More for "discomfit"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.