- a variation of bogle.
boggle
Americanverb (used with object)
-
to overwhelm or bewilder, as with magnitude, complexity, or strangeness.
The speed of light boggles the mind.
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to bungle; botch.
verb (used without object)
noun
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an act of shying or taking alarm.
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a mess; a bungle or botch.
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Archaic. a scruple; demur; hesitation.
verb
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to be surprised, confused, or alarmed (esp in the phrase the mind boggles )
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to hesitate or be evasive when confronted with a problem
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(tr) to baffle; bewilder; puzzle
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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bogglesimple
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bogglessimple
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have boggledperfect
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has boggledperfect
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am bogglingprogressive
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are bogglingprogressive
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is bogglingprogressive
-
have been bogglingperfect progressive
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has been bogglingperfect progressive
Past
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boggledsimple
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had boggledperfect
-
was bogglingprogressive
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were bogglingprogressive
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had been bogglingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of boggle
First recorded in 1590–1600; perhaps from bogle
Explanation
To boggle is to amaze, astonish, or overwhelm. Your mind might boggle at all the information your physics teacher writes on the board on the first day of class. You'll most likely find this verb in sentences like "My brain boggles at the outfit she decided to wear to the party," or "When you watch this movie, your mind will boggle at the special effects." Along with the even more common adjective mind-boggling, boggle comes from the Middle English bugge, or "specter." Boggle originally meant "spook," or "start with fright."
Vocabulary lists containing boggle
The BFG
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"Ad Power," "Without Commercials," and "What's Wrong with Advertising"
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Front Desk
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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.
See Examples For:
They often feature steam-bent wood that makes my mind boggle when I visit, with its twists and turns.
From BBC ● Jul. 10, 2025
But Santos’ wardrobe, and his ability to ape an archetype, is a testament to just how much appearance can boggle the mind.
From Slate ● May 16, 2023
Still, it would boggle my mind if this enthralling masterpiece is overlooked when nominations are announced next month.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 19, 2022
It might boggle the mind, but I wonder if Beyoncé's approach to women's empowerment shows that even Black women can have white feminist leanings.
From Salon ● Aug. 22, 2021
I'll just sit here, if it's okay with you, and let my imagination boggle at what you've told me.
From The Buttoned Sky by Reynard, Geoff St.
It boggles the mind for most people to try to think their way into the perspective of a person like this, so assured of the invincibility that the shield of their untold wealth affords them.
From Slate ● Nov. 14, 2025
That’s on top of the 16 gigawatts of deals announced in the last three weeks, with AMD and Nvidia—a scale of computing power that boggles the mind.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 17, 2025
"That we haven't had elections in all of this time just boggles the mind," says Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu.
From BBC ● Sep. 21, 2025
“The thing that just boggles my mind,” Heming said, “is how do our doctors not already have a Rolodex of how to support caregivers? So that is something that I can’t wait to dig into.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 13, 2025
It boggles me trying to think how Julie managed to communicate all this with the Gestapo captain listening.
From "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein
When I got to Oakland, my girlfriend picked me up, and was boggled that I could not stop laughing for days.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 3, 2026
“We were boggled they felt they could handle it without chains and backwards at a fairly high speed,” Mr. Bullard said.
From New York Times ● Apr. 14, 2022
“I’d invite him in,” she lamely replied, boggled as to what they were looking for.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 20, 2021
Yet my previous audio immersions in Joyce assured me that the text my eyes boggled at, my ears could relish.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 5, 2021
But it was the sheer size of each one of them that boggled Sophie’s brain most of all.
From "The BFG" by Roald Dahl
Skip boggling digital noise machines with 50+ whale sounds.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 3, 2025
But then she makes these audacious, dangerous moves in the story that are just boggling and fantastic, and I think, ‘This is new, this is magical, and yet this feels absolutely real too.’
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 12, 2024
Eco-disaster figures are always so mind boggling, it’s easy to block them out as too big a problem for a single individual to consider.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 16, 2024
Scale this up to all of the ocean and fresh bodies of water where both microplastics and rotifers are present, and the number of nanoplastic particles created every day is mind boggling.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 9, 2023
The mind, already jelled by the advances in modern communication so that further boggling is impossible, twitches.
From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas
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.
