Search the Dictionary

haps in the Caucasus. It is distinct from the Urus of Cæsar, with which it has often been confused.

Inarticulate speech; constant or confused murmur. The babble of our young children. Darwin. The babble of the stream. Tennyson.

The city and tower in the land of Shinar, where the confusion of languages took place. Therefore is the name of it called Babel. Gen. xi. 9.

Confused; Babel-like.

To deceive by trickery; to cajole by confusing the senses; to hoax; to mystify; to humbug. [Colloq.] Addison. What oriental tomfoolery is bamboozling you J. H. Newman.

To throw into utter disorder and confusion, as if by the agency of evil spirits; to bring under diabolical influence; to torment. Bedeviled and used worse than St. Bartholomew. Sterne.

The state of being bedeviled; bewildering confusion; vexatious trouble. [Colloq.]

Any place where uproar and confusion prevail.

Hence: To confuse; to mystify.

To becloud and confuse, as with liquor.

To muddle; to stupefy or bewilder; to confuse.

To lead into perplexity or confusion, as for want of a plain path; to perplex with mazes; or in general, to perplex or confuse greatly. Lost and bewildered in the fruitless search. Addison.

A bewildering tangle or confusion. He . . . soon lost all traces of it amid bewilderment of tree trunks and underbrush. Hawthorne.

To blanch; to make blank; to damp the spirits of; to dispirit or confuse. [Obs.] Each opposite that blanks the face of joy. Shak.

he separate things mixed, or the line of demarcation, can not be distinguished. Hence: To confuse; to confound. Blending the grand, the beautiful, the gay. Percival.

To do or treat in a blundering manner; to confuse. He blunders and confounds all these together. Stillingfleet.

To render obscure by making the form or outline of confused and uncertain, as by soiling; to smear; to make indistinct and confused; as, to blur manuscript by handling it while damp; to blur the impression of a woodcut by an excess of ink. But time hath nothing blurred those lines of favor Which then he wore. Shak.…

To become suffused with red in the cheeks, as from a sense of shame, modesty, or confusion; to become red from such cause, as the cheeks or face. To the nuptial bower I led her blushing like the morn. Milton. In the presence of the shameless and unblushing, the young offender is ashamed to blush. Buckminster. He would…

To make a loud confused noise, as the water of a rapid stream running over stones. Where the brook brawls along the painful road. Wordsworth.

Making a loud confused noise. See Brawl, v. i., 3. A brawling stream. J. S. Shairp.