Puzzling

adj, noun, verb

adj, noun, verb ·3 syllables ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Time spent pondering something confusing.
Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of puzzle form-of, gerund, participle, present
Adjective
  1. 1
    Difficult to understand or explain; enigmatic or confusing; perplexing.

    "Sunning himself on the board steps, I saw for the first time Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke.[…]A silver snaffle on a heavy leather watch guard which connected the pockets of his corduroy waistcoat, together with a huge gold stirrup in his Ascot tie, sufficiently proclaimed his tastes.[…]But withal there was a perceptible acumen about the man which was puzzling in the extreme."

Adjective
  1. 1
    lacking clarity of meaning; causing confusion or perplexity wordnet
  2. 2
    not clear to the understanding wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
enigmaticenigmaticalperplexingableabstruseambiguous

Antonyms

All antonyms
clear

Example

More examples

"I can see how that would be puzzling."

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