Dumb vs Confound - What's the difference?
dumb | confound |
(label) Unable to speak; lacking power of speech.
* Hooker
(label) Silent; unaccompanied by words.
* Shakespeare
*
* J. C. Shairp
extremely stupid.
(label) Pointless, foolish, lacking intellectual content or value.
Lacking brightness or clearness, as a colour.
* De Foe
To silence.
* 1911 , Lindsay Swift, William Lloyd Garrison , p. 272,
To make stupid.
* 2003 , Angela Calabrese Barton, Teaching Science for Social Justice , p. 124,
To represent as stupid.
* 2004 , Stephen Oppenheimer, The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey Out of Africa , p. 107,
To reduce the intellectual demands of.
* 2002 , Deborah Meier, In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing , p. 126,
To confuse; to mix up; to puzzle.
*{{quote-news
, year=2012
, date=June 29
, author=Kevin Mitchell
, title=Roger Federer back from Wimbledon 2012 brink to beat Julien Benneteau
, work=the Guardian
* 1830 , , i, 34,
To fail to see the difference; to mix up; to confuse right and wrong.
* 1651 (Latin edition 1642), ,
To make something worse.
* 1983 , Carol M. Anderson, Susan Stewart, Mastering Resistance: A Practical Guide to Family Therapy ,
To cause to be ashamed; to abash.
To defeat, to frustrate, to thwart.
* 1769 , King James Bible, Oxford Standard text, , i, 27,
* Traditional, date and author unknown, ,
* 1848 February 12, ,
(dated) To damn (a mild oath ).
* 1882 , '' in ''The Gully of Bluemansdyke and Other Stories ,
*1877 , (Anna Sewell), (Black Beauty) Chapter 23[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Black_Beauty/23]
*:"Confound these bearing reins!" he said to himself; "I thought we should have some mischief soon—master will be sorely vexed;
(archaic) To bring to ruination.
To stun, amaze
As verbs the difference between dumb and confound
is that dumb is to silence while confound is to confuse; to mix up; to puzzle.As an adjective dumb
is unable to speak; lacking power of speech.As a noun confound is
a confounding variable.dumb
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) dumb, from (etyl) . In ordinary spoken English, a phrase like "He is dumb" is interpreted as "He is stupid" rather than "He lacks the power of speech". The latter example, however, is the original sense of the word. The senses of stupid'', ''unintellectual'', and ''pointless developed under the influence of the (etyl) word dumm.Adjective
(er)- to unloose the very tongues even of dumb creatures
- dumb show
- This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
- to pierce into the dumb past
- You are so dumb ! You don't even know how to make toast!
- This is dumb ! We're driving in circles! We should have asked for directions an hour ago!
- Brendan had the dumb job of moving boxes from one conveyor belt to another.
- Her stern was painted of a dumb white or dun color.
Synonyms
* (unable to speak) dumbstruck, mute, speechless, wordless * (stupid) feeble-minded, idiotic, moronic, stupid * banal, brainless, dopey, silly, stupid, ridiculous, vulgarDerived terms
* dumb as a box of rocks * dumben * dumbhood * dummy * dumbnessEtymology 2
From (etyl) dumbien, from (etyl) dumbian (more commonly in compound .Verb
(en verb)- The paralysis of the Northern conscience, the dumbing of the Northern voice, were coming to an end.
- I think she's dumbing us down, so we won't be smarter than her.
- Bad-mouthing Neanderthals . . . is symptomatic of a need to exclude and even demonize. . . . I suggest that the unproven dumbing of the Neanderthals is an example of the same cultural preconception.
- The ensuing storm caused the department to lower the bar—amid protests that this was dumbing the test down—so that only 80 percent of urban kids would fail.
Derived terms
* dumbness * dumb blonde * dumb down * dumbocracy * dumb-show * dumb terminal * dummy * play dumbconfound
English
Verb
(en verb)citation, page= , passage=The fightback when it came was in the Federer fashion: unfussy, filled with classy strokes from the back with perfectly timed interventions at the net that confounded his opponent. The third set passed in a bit of a blur, the fourth, which led to the second tie-break, was the most dramatic of the match. }}
- And the brother of Jared being a large and mighty man, and a man highly favored of the Lord, Jared, his brother, said unto him: Cry unto the Lord, that he will not confound us that we may not understand our words.
- Hey who lesse seriously consider the force of words, doe sometimes confound' Law with Counsell, sometimes with Covenant, sometimes with Right. They ' confound Law with Counsell, who think, that it is the duty of Monarchs not onely to give ear to their Counsellours, but also to obey them, as though it were in vaine to take Counsell, unlesse it were also followed.
- Don't confound the situation by yelling.
- While she had obeyed him, smiling sweetly all the time, she had nursed a growing resentment of what she called his "Latin American macho attitude." To confound the problem, his mother, who lived with them on and off, was described by the wife as being as domineering as her son.
- His actions confounded the skeptics.
- But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound' the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to ' confound the things which are mighty;
- O Lord, our God, arise, / Scatter thine enemies, / And make them fall / Confound their politics, / Frustrate their knavish tricks, / On thee our hopes we fix: / God save us all.
- I am now, in order the better to confound your politics, going to give you a true account of the means we intend to use, and of the rules, signs, and pass-words of our new United Irish Society Lodge A. 1.—They are so simple that you will never believe them.
- Confound you!
- Confound the lady!
- "Number 43 is no better, Doctor," said the head-warder, in a slightly reproachful accent, looking in round the corner of my door.
- "Confound 43!" I responded from behind the pages of the Australian Sketcher .