Definition of flummox
transitive verb
: confuse He was flummoxed by the legal jargon. a happy innocent who had been flummoxed by wily city slickers — Andy Logan
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Examples of flummox in a Sentence
an actor who's easily flummoxed by any changes in the script
Recent Examples of flummox from the Web
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Holy Cross starter Brendan King extensively threw off-speed pitches that sometimes flummoxed OSU hitters, who missed early scoring chances by hitting into double plays in each of their first two innings.
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Those three, along with Ryan Ellis, spent that much of that period, and the second, flummoxing the Penguins’ best players, Sidney Crosby and Malkin.
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One night after Max Scherzer flummoxed the Padres with 13 strikeouts over 8 ⅔ innings, Strasburg recorded a career-high 15 strikeouts over seven innings in the Nationals’ 3–0 win over San Diego.
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Less fun, though, will be the inexorable observation that if something as integral as sleep can be flummoxed by climate change, then why wouldn’t everything else be, too?
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The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), was flummoxed by Brown’s action.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'flummox'. Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Did You Know?
No one is completely sure where the word flummox comes from, but we do know that its first known use is found in Charles Dickens' 1837 novel The Pickwick Papers and that it had become quite common in both British and American English by the end of the 19th century. One theory expressed by some etymologists is that it was influenced by "flummock," a word of English dialectical origin used to refer to a clumsy person. This "flummock" may also be the source of the word lummox, which also means "a clumsy person."
Origin and Etymology of flummox
origin unknown
First Known Use: 1836
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