- 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.
But the licensing officer threatened to pull the plug on the show if the orchestra didn’t pay up, baffling musicians who joined their conductor to see what was causing the delay.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jul. 5, 2026
Steve Heapy, chief executive of Jet2, said his airline found "the continued pursuit of a policy so baffling - in cases where it has clearly not been implemented in a robust manner".
From BBC • Jul. 2, 2026
But it’s still baffling, to say the least.
From Salon • May 17, 2026
“To me he’s had the greatest career of any NBA player … for him to do it again and answer the bell again, it’s … baffling in some ways.”
From Los Angeles Times • May 2, 2026
I followed, wanting her to interpret the baffling spectacle I had seen.
From "Black Boy" by Richard Wright
Definitions 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.
