Other forms: bewildered, bewildering, bewilders
To bewilder is to confuse someone so completely they are lost. Bewildered by the rules, utterly bewildering, bewilder the reader.
The wild in it is the point: to bewilder somebody is to lead them into a wilderness, and the word keeps that image of being lost rather than merely puzzled. Bewildering is stronger than confusing and suggests the fault is in the thing.
1verbbewilderTo confuse someone so completely they are lost.
“The complicated tax forms bewildered my grandmother, so I helped her fill them in.”
bewilder is a confusing.
Also accepted in games: baffle
Be- plus an old verb wilder, to lead astray, from wilderness. To bewilder is to lose somebody in the wild.
From be + wilder.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA