baffle
Pronunciation
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Pronunciation
- IPA: /ˈbæfl̩/
baffle (baffles, present participle baffling; past and past participle baffled)
- (obsolete) To publicly disgrace, especially of a recreant knight. [16th-17th c.]
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, VI.7:
- He by the heeles him hung upon a tree, / And baffuld so, that all which passed by / The picture of his punishment might see […].
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, VI.7:
- (obsolete) To hoodwink or deceive (someone). [16th-18th c.]
- To bewilder completely; to confuse or perplex. [from 17th c.]
- Synonyms: Thesaurus:confuse
- I am baffled by the contradictions and omissions in the instructions.
- calculations so difficult as to have baffled, until within a […] recent period, the most enlightened nations
- a. 1705, John Locke, “Of the Conduct of the Understanding”, in Posthumous Works of Mr. John Locke: […], London: […] A[wnsham] and J[ohn] Churchill, […], published 1706, OCLC 6963663 ↗:
- Every abstruse problem, every intricate question will not baffle, discourage or break it [the mind]
- (now rare) To foil; to thwart. [from 17th c.]
- 1798, William Cowper, On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture
- the art that baffles time's tyrannic claim
- a suitable scripture ready to repel and baffle them all
- 1915, Edward Plunkett, Lord Dunsany, Fifty-One Tales
- So they had to search the world again for a sphinx. And still there was none. But they were not men that it is easy to baffle, and at last they found a sphinx in a desert at evening watching a ruined temple whose gods she had eaten hundreds of years ago when her hunger was on her.
- 1798, William Cowper, On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture
- (intransitive) To struggle in vain. [from 19th c.]
- A ship baffles with the winds.
- French: déconcerter, dérouter
- German: verblüffen, verdutzen, verwirren, ratlos machen, aus der Fassung bringen, überraschen
- Italian: sconcertare
- Portuguese: desconcertar
- Russian: озада́чивать
- Spanish: desconcertar, confundir
baffle (plural baffles)
- A device used to dampen the effects of such things as sound, light, or fluid. Specifically, a baffle is a surface which is placed inside an open area to inhibit direct motion from one part to another, without preventing motion altogether.
- Tanker trucks use baffles to keep the liquids inside from sloshing around.
- An architectural feature designed to confuse enemies or make them vulnerable.
- (US, dialect, coal mining) A lever for operating the throttle valve of a winding engine.
- German: Schallwand, Leitblech, Abweiser, Umlenkblech, Schwallblech, Strombrecher, Stromstörer, Tauchwand, Prallblech, Schwallwand, Luftleitblech, Spritzblech
- Portuguese: deflector
- Russian: дефле́ктор
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.004