verb
confound
kuhn-FOWND
verb
1
To completely puzzle or baffle someone.
"The magician's trick confounded the entire audience."
"Economists were confounded by the sudden market crash."
2
To mix up or fail to distinguish between two things.
"It's easy to confound correlation with causation in statistics."
3
To defeat or ruin someone's plans.
"Her clever counter-argument confounded his whole strategy."
noun
1
In statistics, a variable that distorts the apparent relationship between two other variables (a "confounding variable").
"Age turned out to be a confound the researchers hadn't controlled for."
How to Use Confound
Learner’s notesIn plain EnglishTo baffle someone, or to mix things up so badly they can't be told apart.
Common mistake
Confound is a bit stronger/more formal than confuse — often used for something that genuinely stumps experts, not just everyday mix-ups.
Easily confused with
Word Forms
confounded past tense, confounds plural, confounds singular
Study it as flashcards or scroll it in Flow — saved to your collection.
Test yourself on “confound”
A quick quiz — meaning, synonyms & usage
→
Fill the Gap
Can you complete this real example?
The magician's trick _____ the entire audience.
Etymology
From Old French confondre, from Latin confundere, "to pour together, mix up" — the same root that gives us "confuse".