confuse

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old French confus (“troubled, confused; confounded”) or Latin cōnfūsus (“mixed together; confused”), taken into Middle English in the 14th century as the past participle confused, with the native participle ending -ed.^[2][3][4] The present stem and the active voice were inferred from that participle much later, so the verb itself is a back-formation from confused;^[2][5][6][7] Collins dates the back-formation to the 18th century.^[7] The Latin participle belongs to cōnfundō (“to pour together, mix up”),^[4][2][7] the source also of confound.^[8][9] The Anglo-Norman adjective is recorded from the first half of the 12th century, meaning troubled, confounded, ashamed or defeated.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

To defeat, rout or bring to ruin, used only in the passive: about 1330, in Mannyng's Chronicle,^[2][4] a sense that the OED does not record after 1400.^[2]

Semantic evolution

For centuries the verb existed only as a passive participle: the OED notes that confound once had three past participles, confuse, confused and confounded, and that confused became the base of a separate verb.^[2] From about 1350 the participle meant abashed, perplexed or bewildered,^[2] and Barnhart finds confused "bewildered" in Piers Plowman (1378).^[11] The sense of mixing things so that they cannot be told apart is recorded from 1550, in Cranmer,^[2][3] and that of throwing into disorder from 1630.^[2] The verb was entered in Bailey's dictionary (1730–36) and then in Johnson's, but the OED found no active examples in Johnson, Todd or Richardson;^[2] the active voice was rare until the 19th century, when it began to replace confound.^[12][2] Etymonline dates the figurative sense "perplex the mind" to the mid 18th century, but finds it in general use only after about 1800.^[3] Johnson (1755) defined it as to disorder, to mix, and to perplex or obscure.^[13] The sense "mistake one thing for another" dates from 1862, in Ruskin.^[2][3] An adjective confuse, confused or disorderly, borrowed from French, was used from 1362 to the early 18th century,^[2][14] and a noun confuse, confusion, from 1483 to 1562.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1330 – to rout, bring to ruin (passive only; obsolete).^[2][4]
• c. 1350 – to abash, disconcert, perplex.^[2]
• 1362 – the adjective confuse, confused (now obsolete).^[2]
• 1378 – confused, bewildered, in Piers Plowman.^[11]
• 1550 – to mix up so that the parts cannot be distinguished.^[2][3]
• 1630 – to throw into disorder.^[2]
• 1730–36 – entered in Bailey's dictionary.^[2]
• 1816 – intransitive, to become confused or indistinct.^[2]
• 1862 – to mistake one thing for another.^[2][3]
• 1885 – to fail to distinguish between things.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To bewilder or perplex: The new timetable confused the commuters.^[7][5]
2. To mix up in the mind; to take one person or thing for another: Visitors often confuse the two churches.^[7][2]
3. To make unclear or less distinct; to blur: Too many statistics confused her argument.^[7][5]
4. To throw into disorder; to jumble.^[7][5][2]
5. To embarrass or disconcert.^[7][5]
6. (archaic) To defeat or bring to ruin; to rout.^[5][2]

Word family

• confusingly
• confusable
• confusability
• confusably
• confusedness
• reconfuse

Related words

• confused
• confusing
• confusion
• confound
• fuse
• refund
• profuse

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
5. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
8. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
10. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
11. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
12. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press