maze
Americannoun
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a confusing network of intercommunicating paths or passages; labyrinth.
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any complex system or arrangement that causes bewilderment, confusion, or perplexity.
Her petition was lost in a maze of bureaucratic red tape.
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a state of bewilderment or confusion.
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a winding movement, as in dancing.
verb (used with object)
noun
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a complex network of paths or passages, esp one with high hedges in a garden, designed to puzzle those walking through it Compare labyrinth
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a similar system represented diagrammatically as a pattern of lines
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any confusing network of streets, pathways, etc
a maze of paths
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a state of confusion
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of maze
1250–1300; Middle English mase, noun use of aphetic variant of amasen to amaze
Explanation
A maze is a puzzle with twists and turns, where you try to find a path from the entrance to the exit without hitting dead ends. You can walk through a maze, or let your pencil do the walking. The goal of a maze is to get through it, which means going the wrong way, retracing your steps, and choosing different paths. There are mazes that you walk through, and mazes on paper where you draw a line to the end. You can also use maze for any complicated system, like the maze of hallways and staircases in an enormous new school. Originally, maze meant "delusion or bewilderment," which captures what it's like to be inside one.
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:
Big-time players will likely have an array of financial experts to help them navigate the tax maze, Fagan said.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 17, 2026
Down there, a maze of tents and sleeping mats left little space to walk along the platform.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 3, 2026
They spent less time exploring the open arms of the maze, remained longer in the enclosed arms, and exhibited more freezing behavior.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 17, 2026
In a sixth-floor conference room at the end of a maze of hallways in the New York Stock Exchange, Flutter CEO Peter Jackson laid out the firm’s World Cup strategy for Barron’s.
From Barron's ● Jun. 11, 2026
She swore she’d programmed each and every one of us the same way, to shut down when some child made it through the maze and answered the Model 82958s’ question correctly.
From "The School for Whatnots" by Margaret Peterson Haddix
The building, filled to its ceilings, grew increasingly dilapidated; Langley’s paranoia about suspected intruders led him to build mazes of detritus to throw them off.
From Salon ● Jul. 23, 2026
From mazes of cubicles to plentiful lush balconies, office designers keep re-envisioning spaces to support our professional lives.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 5, 2026
Universal plans to swap out occasionally the mazes in Horror Unleashed, which will open a second location in Chicago in 2027.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 28, 2025
Even by the mid-2010s during a proliferation of local haunted attractions, the village downsized but the mazes never lost their charm.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 31, 2025
I miss how we build mazes and guinea-pig playgrounds on my floor for Cinnamon and Nutmeg.
From "Rules" by Cynthia Lord
I want to assume I’m headed toward civilization, but America’s public lands are mazed with old roads that peter out far from anything.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 11, 2020
Across the patio, the mazed eyes, mind-sickness, and poignant affection between Galván and what he calls “my family”, echo down 10 years on different faces.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 8, 2019
Passing coffeehouses and boutiques, I arrived at a room mazed by long tables, with cardstock and Sharpie pens as place settings.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 13, 2018
I knew it had to do with being poor, with learning English and studying the mazed map of London.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 21, 2015
Men's hearts were mazed; such seven bull-hides each other in them lined, So stiff they were with lead sewn in and iron laid thereby; And chief of all was Dares mazed, and drew back utterly.
From The Æneids of Virgil Done into English Verse by Morris, William
It’s mazing how quickly perspective can shift in this league.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 28, 2011
I am the rock, The spiked foundations of the plan ye rear Among the mazing stars.
From Time Magazine Archive
The mountain barrier ahead, looming darkly forbidding in the starlight, with its mazing hollows and woodland crowns, was incapable of inspiration at the moment.
From The Forfeit by Cullum, Ridgwell
The rays that come to me are but faint cross lights, mazing the obscurity wherein I live.
From Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II by Melville, Herman
Even this is a guise of one of the original motives in the mazing medley, where it seems we could trace the ancestry of each if we could linger and if it really mattered.
From Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies by Goepp, Philip H.
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.
