different between confuse vs benumb

English

Etymology

Back formation from Middle English confused ("frustrated, ruined"), from Anglo-Norman confus, from Latin confusus, past participle of confund?.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k?n?fju?z/
• Rhymes: -u?z

Verb

confuse (third-person singular simple present confuses, present participle confusing, simple past and past participle confused)

1. (transitive) to puzzle, perplex, baffle, bewilder (somebody); to afflict by being complicated, contradictory, or otherwise difficult to understand

2. (transitive) To mix up, muddle up (one thing with another); to mistake (one thing for another).

3. (transitive) To mix thoroughly; to confound; to disorder.
4. (transitive, dated) To make uneasy and ashamed; to embarrass.
5. (transitive, obsolete) To rout; discomfit.
6. (intransitive) To be confused.

Synonyms

• flummox
• mistake
• See also Thesaurus:confuse

Related terms

• confused
• confusing
• confusion

Translations

See also

• discombobulate

References

• confuse at OneLook Dictionary Search
• confuse in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k??.fyz/

Adjective

confuse

1. feminine singular of confus

Italian

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -uze

Verb

confuse f pl

1. feminine plural of confuso

Adjective

confuse f pl

1. feminine plural of confuso

Verb

confuse

1. third-person singular past historic of confondere

Latin

Participle

c?nf?se

1. vocative masculine singular of c?nf?sus

References

• confuse in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• confuse in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• confuse in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• confuse in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré Latin-Français, Hachette

English

Etymology

be- +? numb

Verb

benumb (third-person singular simple present benumbs, present participle benumbing, simple past and past participle benumbed)

1. (transitive) To make numb, as by cold or anesthetic.
   • 1583, John Foxe, Actes and Monuments, London: John Daye, Book 4, p. 233,^[1]

     […] the sayd Phillip […] in the same his pilgrimage was stricken with such colde, that he fell into a palsey, and was benumbed of the right side of his body.

   • 1719, Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, London: W. Taylor, p. 344,^[2]

     […] the Cold was insufferable; nor indeed was it more painful than it was surprising, to come but ten Days before out of the old Castile where the Weather was not only warm but very hot, and immediately to feel a Wind from the Pyrenean Mountains, so very keen, so severely cold, as to be intollerable, and to endanger benumbing and perishing of our Fingers and Toes.

   • 1847, Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey, Chapter 2,^[3]

     ‘My hands are so benumbed with the cold that I can scarcely handle my knife and fork.’

2. (transitive, figuratively) To deaden, dull (the mind, faculties, etc.).
   • c. 1601, William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act II, Scene 2,^[4]

     […] If this law

     Of nature be corrupted through affection,

     And that great minds, of partial indulgence

     To their benumbed wills, resist the same,

     There is a law in each well-order’d nation

     To curb those raging appetites that are

     Most disobedient and refractory.

   • 1741, Samuel Richardson, Pamela, London: C. Rivington & J. Osborn, Volume 1, Letter 11, p. 18,^[5]

     I struggled, and trembled, and was so benumb’d with Terror, that I sunk down, not in a Fit, and yet not myself […]

   • 1876, George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, Book 2, Chapter 17,^[6]

     Sorrowful isolation had benumbed her sense of reality, and the power of distinguishing outward and inward was continually slipping away from her.

   • 2002, Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex, New York: Picador, “Hermaphroditus,” p. 483,^[7]

     Five nights a week, six hours a day, for the next four months—and, fortunately, never again—I made my living by exhibiting the peculiar way I am formed. The Clinic had prepared me for it, benumbing my sense of shame, and besides, I was desperate for money.

Derived terms

Translations