perplexing

[per-plek-sing]

adjective

1. puzzling or bewildering; hard to understand, figure out, or solve.

   One of the most perplexing aspects of owning a cat is trying to decipher its various body movements and meows.

   The history of the universe is one of the most perplexing subjects of all time.

Other Word Forms

• perplexingly adverb
• unperplexing adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of perplexing¹

perplex ( def. ) + -ing ² ( def. )

Example Sentences

They enlisted language experts to interpret old anatomical works written in French, Italian and Latin, sometimes in a perplexing blend of several languages.

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“It’s a perplexing business, isn’t it?” he said.

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This wasn't the ancient amphitheatre of Herodium down the road, but it was a sporting spectacle all the same, twisting and turning, bewildering and perplexing.

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He also frequently bewails the exchange of his “real life” as a travel writer for his shadow-self as a spy, a predicament which he finds “fraught, annoying, perplexing, duplicitous.”

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At a formal breakfast in London’s Buckingham Palace, Gagarin stared down at a table setting more perplexing than any cockpit.

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Related Words

• baffling 
• complicated 
• confusing 
• convoluted 
• disconcerting 
• knotty 
• mysterious 
• mystifying www.thesaurus.com
• puzzling 
• thorny 
• worrying www.thesaurus.com