Perplexity
//pəɹˈplɛksəti// noun
noun ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 The state or quality of being perplexed. countable, uncountable
- 2 trouble or confusion resulting from complexity wordnet
- 3 Something that perplexes. countable, uncountable
"The Emperor, who was by then a focus of unresolvable perplexities, stood providing a strongly contrary appearance."
- 4 A measure of how well a probability distribution or model predicts a sample. countable, uncountable
Example
More examples"What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."
Etymology
From Middle English perplexite, borrowed from Middle French perplexité or post-classical Latin perplexitās, from perplexus (“entangled”). By surface analysis, perplex + -ity.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.