as in baffling
to throw into a state of mental uncertainty
our grandmother seems a bit discombobulated by all of this birthday fuss
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Recent Examples of discombobulating
Thing to tell a friend or colleague today For the collectible sticker community, Brazil vs Morocco was a particularly discombobulating experience.
—
Duncan Alexander,
New York Times,
14 June 2026
Thanks to their annual visits to Levi’s Stadium, the Seahawks are vastly better equipped to deal with both the electromagnetic field produced by the nearby substation and the lingering, discombobulating audio waves from the Flight Deck ride at Great America.
—
Michael Nowels,
Mercury News,
8 Feb. 2026
Seeing Sparkle cry about Landfair’s experience — something that Landfair hadn’t fully come to terms with — was discombobulating and infuriating.
—
Cheyenne Roundtree,
Rolling Stone,
31 Jan. 2026
And then there’s the cuteness of its progression indicator—verbs like crunching, moseying, perusing, reticulating, discombobulating and zesting.
—
Deni Ellis Béchard,
Scientific American,
31 Jan. 2026
Watching from the perspective of 2025 is a discombobulating experience.
—
Sophie Gilbert,
The Atlantic,
30 Sep. 2025
Duncan Alexander,
New York Times,
14 June 2026
Thanks to their annual visits to Levi’s Stadium, the Seahawks are vastly better equipped to deal with both the electromagnetic field produced by the nearby substation and the lingering, discombobulating audio waves from the Flight Deck ride at Great America.
—
Michael Nowels,
Mercury News,
8 Feb. 2026
Seeing Sparkle cry about Landfair’s experience — something that Landfair hadn’t fully come to terms with — was discombobulating and infuriating.
—
Cheyenne Roundtree,
Rolling Stone,
31 Jan. 2026
And then there’s the cuteness of its progression indicator—verbs like crunching, moseying, perusing, reticulating, discombobulating and zesting.
—
Deni Ellis Béchard,
Scientific American,
31 Jan. 2026
Watching from the perspective of 2025 is a discombobulating experience.
—
Sophie Gilbert,
The Atlantic,
30 Sep. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for discombobulating
Verb
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The Illinois numbers, especially this year’s, are baffling experts.
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For more than four minutes Darnold drove downfield, connecting on three of four passes, baffling the pass rushers, bleeding the clock, and by the time the Seahawks finally gave the ball back, the Rams had only 25 seconds to live.
Verb
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Similarly, the defensively bewildering 9-6 loss the Wild suffered to start Round 2 in Colorado set the tone for five games that would ultimately be their undoing.
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But even more than engaging the big ideas that Emma’s revelation triggers — pun somewhat intended — Lee and Borli wanted to craft an experience that would mimic its main characters’ bewildering interiority.
Verb
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The most common mistake is confusing more communication with a better signal.
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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s investigation of the alternative medicine industry uncovered a pattern of practitioners across Georgia pushing legal limits on what they’re allowed to do and presenting confusing information about their credentials.
Verb
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The 24 hours between Sunday and Monday made an already puzzling situation even more head spinning.
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Police are investigating after puzzling footage posted online shows a group of men emerging from a manhole in Brooklyn early Friday morning.
Verb
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But there were also perplexing moments that punctured the gravitas of the event (even for an event built around hand-to-hand combat).
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That none of this has ever been clear to Gisèle is perplexing even to her.
Verb
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This doesn’t discredit the fact that mental and physical changes from menopause can be disorienting and jarring.
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The episode is a revealing moment in a story that Pancevski broke large parts of in the Journal in 2023, and a useful glimpse at Washington’s — and the world’s — disorienting fog of war in a broken information environment.
Cite this Entry
“Discombobulating.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/discombobulating. Accessed 25 Jun. 2026.
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