puzzling
Americanadjective
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of puzzling
Explanation
Something that's puzzling is confusing, or hard to understand. It might seem puzzling to you that your best friend claims to hate doughnuts. People sometimes act in puzzling ways, making decisions that you can't comprehend. You might also come across particularly puzzling questions on a test or quiz — these are the hard ones, taking a long time to figure out and requiring a lot of thought. Puzzling comes from the verb puzzle, whose origin is a bit of a puzzle itself. Some experts guess that it comes from pose, formed the way nuzzle is from nose.
Vocabulary lists containing puzzling
Strange
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Strange
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Strange
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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.
Nguyen Minh Dong, a former Volkswagen emissions engineer who now advises on electrification, called the rush to ban fossil fuel bikes in Hanoi "puzzling".
From Barron's • May 19, 2026
Few concepts in physics are as familiar, or as puzzling, as time itself.
From Science Daily • May 18, 2026
The paper, which was published April 27 in Nature Neuroscience, answers a puzzling question about the mechanism controlling this long-observed cerebral movement.
From Los Angeles Times • May 7, 2026
Why cancer has been increasing in people's late teens, 20s, 30s and 40s has been puzzling scientists for years.
From BBC • Apr. 28, 2026
It sometimes took him a while to figure out Crane-man’s riddles, but he preferred puzzling over them to being told what they meant.
From "A Single Shard" by Linda Sue Park
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.
