bemused

UK/bɪˈmjuːzd/US/bɪˈmjuːzd/

adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,347 of 15,258leans written

Bemused means puzzled and unable to make sense of things. A bemused expression, look bemused, bemused by the question.

It does not mean amused, and the confusion between the two is so common that the wrong sense is spreading. Bemused is closer to bewildered: the person is not laughing, they are lost. The muse in it is an old verb meaning to stare or ponder.

Definitions of bemused

1adjectivebemusedPuzzled and unable to make sense of things.C1
“He looked bemused when the waiter brought him a dish he hadn't ordered.”

bemused is a state.

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

bemused in the wild

Worth portrayed a charming, gentle and genial character, totally bemused by life, creating comedic confusion wherever he went.
Harry Worth (actor, born 1917)
China remained something of a joke, the joke was less on the country than on the bemused traveler himself....
One's Company
The screenplay concerns a modern-day Don Juan who enjoys relationships with several different women, but is still bemused by the mysteries of the opposite sex.
The Pleasure Principle (film)
The 'Scottish Theatre Archive' describes how a "genial, slightly bemused style of comedy characterised his 'little' man style of comedy".
Dave Willis (comedian)
In a series of incidents the restrictions of the Act are witnessed by a bemused American tourist.
Dora (1933 film)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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