• IPA: /ˈdæzəl/

dazzle (dazzles, present participle dazzling; past and past participle dazzled)

1. (transitive) To confuse the sight of by means of excessive brightness.

   Dazzled by the headlights of the lorry, the deer stopped in the middle of the street.

   • 1667, John Milton, “Book 9”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708 ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554 ↗:

     Those heavenly shapes / Will dazzle now the earthly, with their blaze / Insufferably bright.

2. (transitive, figuratively) To render incapable of thinking clearly; to overwhelm with showiness or brilliance.

   Synonyms: impress, overpower

   The delegates were dazzled by the originality of his arguments.

3. (intransitive) To be overpowered by light; to be confused by excess of brightness.

• French: éblouir
• German: blenden
• Italian: abbagliare, abbacinare
• Portuguese: ofuscar
• Russian: ослепля́ть
• Spanish: deslumbrar, obnubilar, encandilar

• French: éblouir
• German: verblüffen
• Italian: impressionare, abbagliare
• Portuguese: ofuscar
• Russian: поража́ть
• Spanish: empaparotar, apabullar, obnubilar, encandilar

dazzle

1. A light of dazzling brilliancy.
2. (figurative) Showy brilliance that may stop a person from thinking clearly.
3. (uncommon) A herd of zebra.
   • 1958, Laurens Van der Post, The lost world of the Kalahari: with the great and the little memory (1998 David Coulson edition):

     We were trying to stalk a dazzle of zebra which flashed in and out of a long strip of green and yellow fever trees, with an ostrich, its feathers flared like a ballet skirt around its dancing legs, on their flank, when suddenly […]

4. (uncountable) Dazzle camouflage.

• (group of zebras) herd, zeal.

• Russian: искря́щийся свет