Flummox

//ˈflʌməks// verb

verb ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To confuse; to fluster; to flabbergast. transitive

    "With United's movement flummoxing the visitors, Berbatov saw his low shot saved well by Ben Foster on his first return to Old Trafford."

  2. 2
    be a mystery or bewildering to wordnet
  3. 3
    To give in, to give up, to collapse. intransitive, uncommon

Synonyms

All synonyms
perplexabashaddleaddle the witsamazebaffle

Example

More examples

"With United's movement flummoxing the visitors, Berbatov saw his low shot saved well by Ben Foster on his first return to Old Trafford."

Etymology

Uncertain, probably risen out of a British dialect (OED finds candidate words in Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, southern Cheshire, and Sheffield). The formation seems to be onomatopœic, expressive of the notion of throwing down roughly and untidily. [OED]. First use appears c. 1837 in the writings of Charles Dickens.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.