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Distressing; worrying; perplexing; corroding; as, carking cares.

Mean or unfair artifice to perplex a cause and obscure the truth; stratagem; sharp practice; sophistry. Irritated by perpetual chicanery. Hallam.

To free from obscurity or ambiguity; to relive of perplexity; to make perspicuous. Many knotty points there are Which all discuss, but few can clear. Prior.

To burden; to trammel; to embarrass; to perplex. The commodities are clogged with impositions. Addison. You 'll rue the time That clogs me with this answer. Shak.

Fig.: Entanglement; toil; mesh; perplexity.

To throw into confusion or disorder; to perplex; to strike with amazement; to dismay.

Confused; perplexed.

To perplex; to disconcert; to abash; to cause to lose self- possession.

Obscure; difficult; perplexing; trying; as, a crabbed author. "Crabbed eloquence." Chaucer. How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose. Milton.

Crabbed; difficult, or perplexing. "Persius is crabby, because ancient." Marston.

To cloud, obscure, or perplex; to render less clear or intelligible. Such was his wisdom that his confidence did seldom darkenhis foresight. Bacon. Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge Job. xxxviii. 2.

s like a potter's vessel. Ps. ii. 9. A brave vessel, . . . Dashed all to pieces. Shak. To perplex and dash Maturest counsels. Milton.

That which is descended; descendants; issue. If care of our descent perplex us most, Which must be born to certain woe. Milton.

To render difficult; to impede; to perplex. [R.] Sir W. Temple.

Something difficult; a thing hard to do or to understand; that which occasions labor or perplexity, and requires skill perseverance to overcome, solve, or achieve; a hard enterprise; an obstacle; an impediment; as, the difficulties of a science; difficulties in theology. They lie under some difficulties by reason of th…

To free from embarrassment, or perplexity; to clear; to extricate. To disembarrass himself of his companion. Sir W. Scott.

Freedom or relief from impediment or perplexity.

To disentangle; to free from perplexity; to extricate from confusion. Vaillant has disembroiled a history that was lost to the world before his time. Addison.

To extricate from complication and perplexity; disengage from embarrassing connection or intermixture; to disembroil; to set free; to separate. To disentangle truth from error. Stewart. To extricate and disentangle themselves out of this labyrinth. Clarendon. A mind free and disentangled from all corporeal mixtures. Bp…

To draw (the sight, mind, or attention) in different directions; to perplex; to confuse; as, to distract the eye; to distract the attention. Mixed metaphors . . . distract the imagination. Goldsmith.