i Register
In some senses, perplexedness is marked as obsolete. Watch for register when choosing this word.
perplexedness
noun 2
Collocations
2ADJ.
smiling
PREP.
in
Definitions
noun
1
The quality of being perplexed; bafflement; confusion.
–Why do you wish to marry him? he persisted. She picked little strips of wood from the box, smiling in her perplexedness. He is my husband, she said, with the word that does not quite mean husband.
2
The quality of being intricate, complicated or entangled.
1689, John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, London: Awnsham & John Churchil, 4th edition, 1700, Book 4, Chapter 8, Section 11, p. 317, […] most Writers are so far from instructing us in the Nature and Knowledge of Things, that they use their Words loosly and uncertainly, and do not, by using them constantly and steadily in the same signification, make plain and clear deductions of Words one from another, and make their Discourses coherent and clear, (how little soever it were instructive), which were not difficult to do, did they not find it convenient to shelter their Ignorance or Obstinacy, under the Obscurity and perplexedness of their Terms […]
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Idioms & Phrases
Example Bank
201
–Why do you wish to marry him? he persisted. She picked little strips of wood from the box, smiling in her perplexedness. He is my husband, she said, with the word that does not quite mean husband.
Wiktionary02
1689, John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, London: Awnsham & John Churchil, 4th edition, 1700, Book 4, Chapter 8, Section 11, p. 317, […] most Writers are so far from instructing us in
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