Word of the Day: Perplex
/pər-‘pleks/, verb:
1. a. to make difficult to grasp or understand clearly; puzzle, bewilder, or disconcert
Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm. Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850 – 1894
1. b. to make intricate or involved; complicate
The debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed, seeming to be dragged rather than to march, to the intended goal. Something of this sort must, I think, always happen in public democratic assemblies. Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805 – 1859
2. adjective (-ing): completely baffling; difficult to grasp
All of us might wish at times that we lived in a more tranquil world, but we don’t. And if our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity. Robert Kennedy, 1925 – 1968