baffle

Origin uncertain.

• IPA^(key): /ˈbæfl̩/
• Hyphenation: baf‧fle

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æfəl

baffle (third-person singular simple present baffles, present participle baffling, simple past and past participle baffled)

1. (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 […].

2. (obsolete) To hoodwink or deceive (someone). [16th-18th c.]

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Barrow to this entry?)

3. To bewilder completely; to confuse or perplex. [from 17th c.]

   I am baffled by the contradictions and omissions in the instructions.

   • Prescott

     calculations so difficult as to have baffled, until within a […] recent period, the most enlightened nations

   • John Locke

     The mere intricacy of a question should not baffle us.

4. (now rare) To foil; to thwart. [from 17th c.]
   • Cowper

     the art that baffles time's tyrannic claim

   • South

     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.

5. (intransitive) To struggle in vain. [from 19th c.]

   A ship baffles with the winds.

• See also Thesaurus:confuse

baffle (plural baffles)

1. 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.

2. An architectural feature designed to confuse enemies or make them vulnerable.
3. (US, dialectal, coal mining) A lever for operating the throttle valve of a winding engine.

• IPA^(key): /bafl/

baffle m (plural baffles)

1. speaker (audio)