Baffle

Part of speech: noun (n.)

A defeat by artifice, shifts, and turns; discomfiture. [R.] "A baffle to philosophy." South.

Part of speech: verb (v.)

1. To cause to undergo a disgraceful punishment, as a recreant knight. [Obs.] He by the heels him hung upon a tree, And baffled so, that all which passed by The picture of his punishment might see. Spenser.

2. To check by shifts and turns; to elude; to foil. The art that baffles time's tyrannic claim. Cowper.

3. To check by perplexing; to disconcert, frustrate, or defeat; to thwart. "A baffled purpose." De Quincey. A suitable scripture ready to repel and baffle them all. South. Calculations so difficult as to have baffled, until within a . . . recent period, the most enlightened nations. Prescott. The mere intricacy of a question should not baffle us. Locke. Baffling wind (Naut.), one that frequently shifts from one point to another.

Synonyms: balk; thwart; foil; frustrate; defeat.

Part of speech: verb (v.)

1. To practice deceit. [Obs.] Barrow.

2. To struggle against in vain; as, a ship baffles with the winds. [R.]