confounding

[kon-foun-ding, kuhn-]

adjective

1. perplexing or bewildering.

   He’s hosting an evening of readings from some of the most sensational and confounding cases of Sherlock Holmes.

2. throwing someone or something into confusion or disorder.

   Still in shock, his wife broke the confounding news that their only son had been killed by a stray bullet.

3. Statistics.,  interacting with both the dependent and independent variables in an experiment or study, making it impossible to determine a causal effect between them.

   The authors list potential confounding factors, but it is not clear from the paper whether all of these were controlled for in the analyses.

noun

1. the act of perplexing, bewildering, causing confusion or disorder, etc..

   The Jaredite civilization is supposed to have formed in the wake of the miraculous confounding of languages at the Tower of Babel.

2. the act of treating or viewing different things as if they were the same.

   I have always found the confounding of Christmas and Hanukkah disturbing.

Other Word Forms

• confoundingly adverb
• unconfounding adjective
• unconfoundingly adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of confounding¹

First recorded in 1425–75; confound ( def. ) + -ing ² ( def. ) for the adjective senses; confound ( def. ) + -ing ¹ ( def. ) for the noun senses

Example Sentences

“So you see, Mr. Harley-Dickinson,” she concluded, “that is why I must speak with that Gypsy. Unlikely as it seems, the semitoothless soothsayer may know something about what lies beneath all these confounding events.”

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Then, as has happened so often this season, a confounding moment of adversity struck.

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The various studies are mainly observational and could be skewed by confounding factors—people who are healthy for other reasons could use stairs more, for example.

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“There’s no sugarcoating this,” Freeman echoed a few weeks later, when another confounding sweep to the Pittsburgh Pirates in early September was followed by another walk-off loss to the Orioles in team’s series-opener in Baltimore.

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Winning a championship trophy is, and the sometimes confounding but always contending Dodgers are four victories away.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Related Words

• arresting 
• astonishing 
• bizarre 
• compelling 
• conspicuous 
• dazzling 
• eye-catching 
• fascinating 
• handsome 
• impressive 
• marked 
• memorable 
• noteworthy 
• noticeable 
• outstanding 
• powerful 
• remarkable 
• salient 
• singular 
• startling