Baffle vs Muddle - What's the difference?
baffle | muddle | Synonyms |
(obsolete) To publicly disgrace, especially of a recreant knight.
* 1596 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , VI.7:
(obsolete) To hoodwink or deceive (someone).
To bewilder completely; to confuse or perplex.
* Prescott
* John Locke
* Cowper
* South
To struggle in vain.
A device used to dampen the effects of such things as sound, light, or fluid. Specifically, a baffle is a surface which is placed inside an open area to inhibit direct motion from one part to another, without preventing motion altogether.
An architectural feature designed to confuse enemies or make them vulnerable.
To mix together, to mix up; to confuse.
To mash slightly for use in a cocktail.
To dabble in mud.
To make turbid or muddy.
* L'Estrange
To think and act in a confused, aimless way.
To cloud or stupefy; to render stupid with liquor; to intoxicate partially.
* Bentley
* Arbuthnot
To waste or misuse, as one does who is stupid or intoxicated.
* Hazlitt
A mixture; a confusion; a garble.
As verbs the difference between baffle and muddle
is that baffle is to publicly disgrace, especially of a recreant knight while muddle is to mix together, to mix up; to confuse.As nouns the difference between baffle and muddle
is that baffle is a device used to dampen the effects of such things as sound, light, or fluid. Specifically, a baffle is a surface which is placed inside an open area to inhibit direct motion from one part to another, without preventing motion altogether while muddle is a mixture; a confusion; a garble.baffle
English
Verb
(baffl)- He by the heeles him hung upon a tree, / And baffuld so, that all which passed by / The picture of his punishment might see […].
- (Barrow)
- I am baffled by the contradictions and omissions in the instructions.
- calculations so difficult as to have baffled , until within a recent period, the most enlightened nations
- The mere intricacy of a question should not baffle us.
- the art that baffles time's tyrannic claim
- a suitable scripture ready to repel and baffle them all
- A ship baffles with the winds.
Synonyms
* See alsoNoun
(en noun)- Tanker trucks use baffles to keep the liquids inside from sloshing around.
muddle
English
Verb
(muddl)- Young children tend to muddle their words.
- He muddled the mint sprigs in the bottom of the glass.
- (Jonathan Swift)
- He did ill to muddle the water.
- Their old master Epicurus seems to have had his brains so muddled and confounded with them, that he scarce ever kept in the right way.
- often drunk, always muddled
- They muddle it [money] away without method or object, and without having anything to show for it.
Derived terms
* muddler (agent noun) * muddle along * muddle through * muddle upNoun
(en noun)- The muddle of nervous speech he uttered did not have much meaning.
