confound

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English confounden, also confunden,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Anglo-Norman confoundre, also confundre,^[5][6][3][2] with Old French confondre beside it,^[5][3][7][8] from Latin cōnfundō (“to pour together, mix up, confuse”).^[5][3][7][9] The MED takes it from Anglo-Norman and Latin together.^[2] The Anglo-Norman verb is recorded from about 1136–37, already meaning to overthrow, refute, destroy, curse, and confuse.^[10] The Latin verb is formed from com- (“together”) and fundō (“to pour”),^{[5][3][7][11]} from a nasalized form of Proto-Indo-European *gheu- (“to pour”).^[7][12] Confuse and confused come from the same Latin verb, through its participle cōnfūsus, and the OED notes that they were at first used as passive participles of confound.^[5][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

To abash, put to shame: about 1290, in the South English Legendary.^[5] Barnhart likewise has "make uneasy and ashamed", about 1300,^[3] and Etymonline has "condemn, curse" and "destroy utterly", about 1300.^[7] Dictionary.com dates the word to 1250–1300.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The Latin verb's literal sense of pouring together had passed to mixing things up and then, of the mind, to perplexing,^[11][7] but in Middle English the early senses were mostly the violent ones found in Anglo-Norman: to defeat and ruin an enemy, from 1297, and to overthrow a scheme or hope, from about 1315.^[5] Weekley saw in the first the source of the curse confound it, on record from about 1330,^[13][5] which the OED says has been felt since 1700 as a mild form of the older imprecation.^[5] The sense of throwing the mind into confusion appears about 1374, in Chaucer's translation of Boethius,^[5] and before 1376 in a version of Piers Plowman;^[3] Chaucer has the verb 23 times and Gower 3.^[14] The OED finds only in the 16th century the senses that lie closest to the Latin: mixing things so they can't be told apart, from before 1538, throwing things into disorder, from 1553, and mistaking one thing for another, from 1581, in Lambarde's Eirenarcha.^[5][7] Johnson (1755) put mingling first, quoting the confounding of languages in Genesis 11:7.^[15] Shakespeare's use in Henry IV, Part 1 for wasting time is one of several extinct senses,^[5][6] and in west Somerset dialect it meant to spoil or wear out clothes.^[16]

Timeline

• c. 1290 – to abash, put to shame.^[5]
• 1297 – to defeat utterly, to ruin an enemy.^[5]
• c. 1315 – to overthrow a scheme or hope.^[5]
• c. 1330 – in curses.^[5]
• c. 1374 – to perplex, in Chaucer.^[5]
• c. 1384 – to refute in argument, in the Wycliffite Bible (obsolete by 1726).^[5]
• c. 1420 – to spoil, corrupt (obsolete by 1744).^[5]
• before 1538 – to mix up so that the parts can't be told apart.^[5]
• 1553 – to throw things into disorder.^[5]
• 1581 – to mistake one thing for another.^[5][7]
• 1598 – to waste, spend, in Shakespeare (obsolete by 1701).^[5][6]

Meanings

Verb

1. To perplex or astound someone, throwing their mind into confusion: The sudden drop in sales confounded the analysts.^[17][5][6]
2. To mix up things or ideas, or to regard one wrongly as another: Students often confound weather with climate.^[17][5]
3. To prove a plan, expectation or argument wrong; to defeat or baffle it.^[17][5][8]
4. (mild imprecation) To curse or damn, as in confound it!^[17][5][6]
5. To put to shame or abash, usually in the passive and with an allusion to the Bible.^[5][6][8]
6. (archaic) To rout or defeat an enemy, or bring someone to ruin.^[8][5][17]
7. (obsolete, 1420–1744) To spoil or corrupt.^[5][8]
8. (obsolete, 1598–1701) To waste or spend.^{[5][8][17][6]}

Word family

• confounder
• confoundingly
• confoundable
• dumbfound
• unconfound

Related words

• confuse
• found
• fuse

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
11. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
12. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
13. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
14. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
16. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
17. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins