PUZZLE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Puzzle

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/pˈəzəl/ Listen

noun

puzzle n.

Something which perplexes or embarrasses; especially, a toy or a problem contrived for testing ingenuity; also, something exhibiting marvelous skill in making.

The state of being puzzled; perplexity; as, to be in a puzzle.

verb

puzzle v. t. (past & past part. puzzled; pres. part. puzzling)

To perplex; to confuse; to embarrass; to put to a stand; to nonplus. "A very shrewd disputant in those points is dexterous in puzzling others." "He is perpetually puzzled and perplexed amidst his own blunders."

To make intricate; to entangle. "They disentangle from the puzzled skein." "The ways of Heaven are dark and intricate, Puzzled in mazes, and perplexed with error."

To solve by ingenuity, as a puzzle; followed by out; as, to puzzle out a mystery.

Synonyms: To embarrass; perplex; confuse; bewilder; confound. See Embarrass.

Puzzle v. i.

To be bewildered, or perplexed. "A puzzling fool, that heeds nothing."

To work, as at a puzzle; as, to puzzle over a problem.

See images of 'Puzzle'

Etymology of 'Puzzle'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Puzzle" Quotes from Famous Books

... a puzzle to decide which appeared first, the egg out of which the fowl was hatched, or the hen which laid the egg; and it is an equal puzzle to the anthropologist to say whether man was first brought into existence as a babe or in maturity. In both ...

— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... character and aspect of its original native vegetation. Nevertheless, even in the matter of its plants and trees, Australia must still be considered a very old-fashioned and stick-in-the-mud continent. The strange puzzle-monkeys, the quaint-jointed casuarinas (like horsetails grown into big willows), and the park-like forests of blue gum-trees, with their smooth stems robbed of their outer bark, impart a marvellously antiquated ...

— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... "Indians" of South and Central America they were always on excellent terms, and the Californians proffered divine honours to Francis Drake. These are paradoxes precisely similar in kind to those which so often puzzle amiable and mature observers of the British schoolboy to-day. Broadly, they were governed by instincts and impulses rather than by reasoned ethical theory, instincts occasionally barbaric but for the most part frank and generous; and ...

— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... Coal, wrote: "...I sometimes think it could not have been formed at all. Old Sir Anthony Carlisle once said to me gravely that he supposed Megatherium and such cattle were just sent down from heaven to see whether the earth would support them, and I suppose the coal was rained down to puzzle mortals. You must work the ...

— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... inferences, be denominated a gang of desperate robbers. But it seldom happens that robbers in the vicinity of a rich and populous city are to be found in a state of such utter destitution; and if such were really the case, it might puzzle the beholder to discover what possible inducement they could have to continue in so unprofitable ...

— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

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