- present participle of confound.
confounding
Americanadjective
-
perplexing or bewildering.
He’s hosting an evening of readings from some of the most sensational and confounding cases of Sherlock Holmes.
-
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.
-
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
-
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.
-
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
Etymology
Origin of confounding
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
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
For those who know of exorcisms primarily from horror movies, the news of a professional exorcist in the nation’s capital causing drama may have been a bit confounding.
From Slate ● Jun. 8, 2026
The Canadian study did not contain major errors as Wakefield’s paper did, though some critics argued at the time that it didn’t sufficiently control for confounding factors such as maternal depression.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 27, 2026
“We cannot look at this single liver case in a silo,” Raffat wrote, adding that “such cases do tend to occur on other GLPs as well because of various confounding factors.”
From Barron's ● May 4, 2026
Among the many contentious strongmen who have popped up worldwide in the first decades of the 21st century, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey is the most confounding.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 30, 2026
In fact, they had encountered the same wave-particle duality of light that was confounding their elders in physics.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
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.
