1
as in confuses
to throw into a state of mental uncertainty
we were confounded by the player's remote control, which wasn't at all user-friendly
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in embarrasses
to throw into a state of self-conscious distress
his renewed popularity has confounded the critics who said his singing career was dead
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3
as in conflates
to fail to differentiate (a thing) from something similar or related
I think you've confounded astrology with astronomy
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4
as in refutes
to prove to be false
new discoveries that confound much of what archaeologists thought they knew about the Mayan civilization
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of confounds
Again, all of this confounds traditional attempts at sense making.
—
Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic, 4 Sep. 2025
Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic, 4 Sep. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for confounds
Verb
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And so an urban tunnel not only blocks some satellites, but confuses the listeners as to which are direct or reflected signals.—
Steve Tengler,
Forbes.com,
3 Sep. 2025
Verb
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Yet Superman's entire story refutes this zero-sum thinking.—
Nicholas Creel,
MSNBC Newsweek,
12 Aug. 2025
Verb
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The insight reportedly overturns a paradigm established nearly two centuries ago by popular British mathematician Lord Kelvin’s brother, James Thompson, who at the time proposed that pressure and friction contribute to ice melting alongside temperature.—
Georgina Jedikovska,
Interesting Engineering,
5 Sep. 2025
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The decision overturns a ruling by a lower-court judge in 2023 who had declared the law unconstitutional after previously blocking it from taking effect in 2021.—
Reuters,
NBC news,
13 Aug. 2025
Verb
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Wedged in the far southeastern corner of the bottom of the continent, between South Africa and Mozambique, Eswatini is the last absolute monarchy in Africa, a status that bewilders modernizers and beguiles traditionalists.—
The Editors,
JSTOR Daily,
15 Aug. 2025
Verb
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In New York, there’s no worry; no one bothers us.—
Katie Schultz,
Architectural Digest,
29 Aug. 2025
Verb
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One case that still baffles is the macabre story of Virginia McCullough, who killed her parents for their money – and then lived with their bodies for four years.—
KC Baker,
People.com,
15 Aug. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Confounds.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/confounds. Accessed 11 Sep. 2025.
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