befuddlement
nounEtymology From befuddle + -ment.
1
The state of being befuddled; a feeling of being dazed and perplexed due to confusion.
- His words struck me with a sense of befuddlement that lasted until I got home.
- 1907, Algernon Blackwood, “Max Hensig—Bacteriologist and Murderer” Chapter 4, in The Listener and Other Stories, New York: Knopf, 1917, p. 105, It was, of course, an effect of hypnotism, he remembered thinking, vaguely through the befuddlement of his drink—this culminating effect of an evil and remorseless personality acting upon one that was diseased and extra receptive.
1 more example
- A change came over his wind-beaten face, a slight befuddlement, the shock of some minor fact jarred loose.1985, Don DeLillo, White Noise, Penguin, published 1986, Part I, Chapter 21, p. 162:
- Related terms
- confusion