- present participle of baffle.
baffling
Britishadjective
Other Word Forms
Explanation
If something is baffling, it's completely confusing or mysterious. You might find your friend's hatred for the taste of chocolate utterly baffling. A good mystery novel begins with a baffling crime — one that seems at first nearly impossible to solve. You might also find your math homework baffling or wander around the baffling snarl of streets in a city with no idea where you are. The earliest meaning of baffling was nautical, describing winds blowing in all directions. It comes from the verb baffle, which first meant "to disgrace" before it came to mean "to confuse."
Vocabulary lists containing baffling
This Week in Words: January 27 - February 2, 2018
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Leclerc took second as team-mate Lewis Hamilton finished sixth after a baffling strategy that was a consequence of the Briton choosing not to pit when asked.
From BBC ● Oct. 11, 2026
Chutzpah, however, is sometimes all it takes to get this kind of baffling, brazen and potentially exploitative deal across the finish line.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 6, 2026
There have been baffling late-game breakdowns and avoidable mistakes, which inevitably leads to questions for the new head coach, Kyle Whittingham, fresh in from Utah.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 5, 2026
Yet ProPublica’s analysis found a stark and baffling increase: Almost 200 women with the condition died from 2020 to 2025, compared with about 100 in the previous six years.
From Salon ● Sep. 13, 2026
The days in Vught were a baffling mixture of good and bad.
From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
