Baffle

Definition of Baffle

Baf´fle   Pronunciation: băf´f'l
v. t.1.
[imp. & p. p. Baffled (-f'ld); p. pr. & vb. n. Baffling (-flĭng).]
1.To cause to undergo a disgraceful punishment, as a recreant knight.
He by the heels him hung upon a tree,
And baffled so, that all which passed by
The picture of his punishment might see.
- Spenser.
2.To check by shifts and turns; to elude; to foil.
The art that baffles time's tyrannic claim.
- Cowper.
3.To check by perplexing; to disconcert, frustrate, or defeat; to thwart.
A suitable scripture ready to repel and baffle them all.
- South.
Calculations so difficult as to have baffled, until within a . . . recent period, the most enlightened nations.
- Prescott.
The mere intricacy of a question should not baffle us.
- Locke.
Baffling wind
(Naut.) one that frequently shifts from one point to another.
v. i.1.To practice deceit.
2.To struggle against in vain; as, a ship baffles with the winds.
n.1.A defeat by artifice, shifts, and turns; discomfiture.
2.(Engin.) A deflector, as a plate or wall, so arranged across a furnace or boiler flue as to mingle the hot gases and deflect them against the substance to be heated.
2.(Coal Mining) A lever for operating the throttle valve of a winding engine.

Related Words

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