confound.
To perplex or puzzle.
Meaning & usage
To perplex or puzzle.
To stun or amaze.
To fail to see the difference; to mix up; to confuse right and wrong.
To make something worse.
Don't confound the situation by yelling.
To combine in a confused fashion; to mingle so as to make the parts indistinguishable.
To cause to be ashamed; to abash.
His actions confounded the skeptics.
To defeat, to frustrate, to thwart.
To damn (a mild oath).
Confound you!
Confound the lady!
To destroy, ruin, or devastate; to bring to ruination.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English confounden (“destroy, ruin, perplex”), from Anglo-Norman cunfundre and Old French confondre, from Latin cōnfundō (“to mingle, mix together”). Related to found (“to melt (metals in a foundry)”) (but not to found (“to start”), nor to find) and to fusion.
A confounding variable.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English confounden (“destroy, ruin, perplex”), from Anglo-Norman cunfundre and Old French confondre, from Latin cōnfundō (“to mingle, mix together”). Related to found (“to melt (metals in a foundry)”) (but not to found (“to start”), nor to find) and to fusion.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.