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confound
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  • There was a Grub Street hack named O'Leary—an Irishman, I should add—who had the nerve, the confounded cheek to write of my first slim volume of poems, A Nosegay of Beauty Assembled for Gentlemen of Quality, that it was inferior doggerel of no worth whatsoever, and that the paper it was written on would have been better used as—no, I cannot say.†   (source)
  • Thank you for your commiserations, my friend, and now you'd best be off, back to your confounded computer.†   (source)
  • That this body of water was so seldom used had confounded her for months.†   (source)
  • As Langdon ran, his thoughts turned over and over in a kaleidoscope of confounding images-Kohler, Janus, the Hassassin, Rocher ....a sixth brand?†   (source)
  • I have been thirty-two year at the bar, sir, and I should be confounded were I called upon to defend these people.†   (source)
  • The question bothered him, because he wasn't sure whether he was confounding or fulfilling their expectations.†   (source)
  • But aunt babies confounded her.†   (source)
  • During the oral exams for his PhD, he made up a particularly complicated algorithm on the fly that, as one of his many admirers has written, "so stunned his examiners [that] one of them later compared the experience to 'Jesus confounding his elders/ " Working in collaboration with a small group of programmers, Joy took on the task of rewriting U N I X, which was a software system developed by AT&T for mainframe computers.†   (source)
  • For when Ashima and Ashoke close their eyes it never fails to unsettle them, that their children sound just like Americans, expertly conversing in a language that still at times confounds them, in accents they are accustomed not to trust.†   (source)
  • I'm confounded at first.†   (source)
  • Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins.†   (source)
  • A barrier that has been completely spumed, snubbed, and confounded by Y.T., who dropped out of the sky into the middle of the camp like a Stealth fighter with an inferiority complex.†   (source)
  • Her request confounded me, to say the least, as it was unusual for someone of her standing to ask to be taken some distance to meet the family of a servant.†   (source)
  • Generalisimo Doctor Rafael L. Trujillo, Benefactor of our Country Illustrious and well-loved Jefe, Knowing as I do, the high esteem in which my husband Enrique Mirabal held your illustrious person, and now somewhat less confounded by the irreparable loss of my unforgettable companero, I write to inform Your Excellency of his death on Monday, the fourteenth day of this month.†   (source)
  • The assassin, a man named Rachidi Minzele, was immediately shot and killed, taking with him the only definitive knowledge about the motives behind his deed, which spawned a confounding web of conspiracy theories.†   (source)
  • And believing thus, being thus confounded, I can now accept the most fantastical truth of all: that there is no meaning to any of this!†   (source)
  • I hated these visits, because I kept feeling the visitors measuring my fat and stringy hair against what I had been and what they wanted me to be, and I knew they went away utterly confounded.†   (source)
  • I don't care what you say; I won't use those confounded barges, not after what we've gone through in the Spine.†   (source)
  • Will wanted to smash his confounded window.†   (source)
  • Lorenzo Daza, in fact, took no more than five minutes to say what he had to say, and he did so with a disarming sincerity that confounded Florentino Ariza.†   (source)
  • After a long piece of his intestine was removed, Dad confounded everybody by going back to work in a month.†   (source)
  • They confounded him and he didn't think they were good neighbors.†   (source)
  • She confounds us all.†   (source)
  • The probationer was mortified at the sound of a baby that had come alive right behind her back, confounding her most basic clinical assumptions.†   (source)
  • Confounding.†   (source)
  • Puts a man in one confounded bind, I'd say.†   (source)
  • "Confounded fool!" said Hazel.†   (source)
  • You feel fortunate to have such a knowledgeable expert as an ally in this most confounding enterprise.†   (source)
  • Chris looked totally confounded.†   (source)
  • Immoral logic seemed to be confounding him at every turn.†   (source)
  • In peace and quiet, without a lot of relatives prying around, and a string of confounded visitors hanging on the bell.†   (source)
  • Asha, he thought, confounded.†   (source)
  • No wonder Atticus confounded Henry in the early days of their association by saying, "Pleading's little more than putting on paper what you want to say."†   (source)
  • Tom watched, confounded by the sight.†   (source)
  • He shook his head, confounded.†   (source)
  • But one obstacle confounded me.†   (source)
  • The Greeks, of course, have little if any idea of our Independence Day, and must find John's display of patriotism somewhat confounding.†   (source)
  • I was confounded as to what I had said that had amused her so.†   (source)
  • He had confounded them all by passing the test, although they still refused him the ballot ....Anyway, these were different.†   (source)
  • Damn it, what a confounded nuisance!†   (source)
  • Oh, Flood-the-Gates used it incessantly, confusing juries with his erudition and confounding his peers with multiple decises.†   (source)
  • The one is forever aiding him in his upward journey to the portals of heaven, the other is forever confounding him.†   (source)
  • I was just as glad, as he would have been just too confounded understanding about the billet I had drawn.†   (source)
  • All this confounds me even more.†   (source)
  • Physics decreed something like falling, and yet the hills of surf, with their own valleys, peaks, and plateaux, confounded his expectations.†   (source)
  • I believe children possess an enviable ability to cope with and make sense of what even adults find confounding; they can accept the unacceptable in a way that astonishes me.†   (source)
  • Raziel's voice was confounded.†   (source)
  • It confounds Grant that his top generals are so terrified of Lee, holding back when they should rush in.†   (source)
  • While I can appreciate inspired, well-crafted writing better than most, I'm absolutely confounded when attempting to do it myself.†   (source)
  • But what was undiminishable, and, as already so flatly suggested, a joy of a kind forever, was an authentic esprit superimposed over his entire face—especially at the eyes, where it was often as arresting as a Harlequin mask, and, on occasion, much more confounding.†   (source)
  • "I am confounded," said Reepicheep to Aslan.†   (source)
  • She had telephoned him at his boardinghouse, and when he heard that confounded "Junie?"†   (source)
  • Dumbshow first, your confounded majesty!†   (source)
  • Free at last to begin our takeoff run, the aircraft confounded its pilot by resolutely refusing to become airborne.†   (source)
  • Small things, preposterous tiny things, still confounded her.†   (source)
  • Confounding the curses that came his way-and there were many, for his usury was harsh beyond necessity-he continued to prosper, squeezing the life from those hapless creatures who were driven to borrow from him, and gaining his strength from their weakness.†   (source)
  • It seemed pure, inexplicable rage, and Luke Hodge was hurled back into his cage of misery and confounded.†   (source)
  • At Jaybird Kelsey's confounded face.†   (source)
  • When we are in confusion, then in the midst of our straggling
    It overtakes us and, on the instant, confounds us.†   (source)
  • Yet Gabriel felt that he had surprised them; he had found them out and they were a little ashamed and confounded before his purity.†   (source)
  • Unharmed, he stalked the state in characteristic fashion, confounding his enemies with powerful sarcasm.†   (source)
  • That confounded adding machine!†   (source)
  • She confounded their attempts to get a "yes" vote.
  • My plan to buy a car was confounded by the small print on the loan document.
  • She was confounded by the rapid change in circumstances.
  • She seemed to find the exercise more confounding than anything else.†   (source)
  • What misbegotten items are hidden in those confounded wagons?†   (source)
  • His eyes stared in confounded fascination.†   (source)
  • 'Of all the confounded nuisances you are the worst, Sam!†   (source)
  • But Anys Gowdie confounded such thinking.†   (source)
  • I didn't like the look of things, for all my wish to see the committee confounded.†   (source)
  • Do you have to be so confounded regulation?†   (source)
  • "Oh, curse these confounded patrols!" cried Hazel.†   (source)
  • Their banter might be hilarious were it not so confounding and, often, scary.†   (source)
  • And that's another thing — I can't stand an officer who acts like a confounded kaydet.†   (source)
  • It'll close up naturally one day, I suppose, but meanwhile it's a confounded nuisance.†   (source)
  • But these cabinsl" He seemed surprised and confounded.†   (source)
  • 'We'd have to keep an eye open for that confounded Rowsby Woof as well.'†   (source)
  • It's just that we have been so confounded busy.†   (source)
  • But there is always some confounded innovator.†   (source)
  • No. Confounded plug came out and we lost our fire.†   (source)
  • The Hero who confounds Igli may choose any house.†   (source)
  • "Please don't say that," she put in quickly, ashamed of the way her tone had confounded him.†   (source)
  • Every time Langdon lectured on the symbology of America, his students were confounded to learn that the true intentions of our nation's forefathers had absolutely nothing to do with what so many politicians now claimed.†   (source)
  • Mary Warren, utterly confounded, and becoming overwhelmed by Abigail's—and the girls'—utter conviction, starts to whimper, hands half raised, powerless, and all the girls begin whimpering exactly as she does.†   (source)
  • The very idea, concluded the Count as he opened the door to his rooms, confounded one's reason, offended the laws of nature, and flew in the face of common—†   (source)
  • Confounded, I found myself sitting finally on those dark steps, the light from the ballroom throwing my own shadow on the rough floor, my hands holding my head, a weariness overcoming me.†   (source)
  • By then she had performed unfalteringly under the twins' perspicacious scrutiny and had confounded all their expectations.†   (source)
  • "Stacey made me leave and Mr. Barnett told me I couldn't come back no more and then I bumped into that confounded Lillian Jean and she tried to make me get off the sidewalk and then her daddy come along and he—" Big Ma's eyes grew large and she whispered hoarsely, "Cassie, I don't think—"†   (source)
  • The volume of things was confounding—the volume of air above me, the volume of water around and beneath me.†   (source)
  • I was confounded.†   (source)
  • Because I had to try something before letting Eragon and Saphira fly so far away, and because you have made a habit of confounding expectations and prevailing where others would have faltered or given up.†   (source)
  • She was lost, confounded.†   (source)
  • He hated to argue, because other people were always much faster than he, and confounded everything he said.†   (source)
  • Vladimir— I must say that I am greatly confounded by your recent letter, as I have not shared the company of your uncle in many months.†   (source)
  • On one hand, he made enormous progress with his training, mastering subject after subject that had once confounded him.†   (source)
  • It was confounding, this logic of his.†   (source)
  • She had not said a word to her father since the beginning of the trip, and he was so confounded that he hardly spoke to her even when it was an absolute necessity to do so, or he sent the mule drivers to her with messages.†   (source)
  • Is it your plan, then, Sonny my boy, to disgrace the entire state of West Virginia with your confounded ignorance?†   (source)
  • And it was as though I myself was being dispossessed of some painful yet precious thing which I could not bear to lose; something confounding, like a rotted tooth that one would rather suffer indefinitely than endure the short, violent eruption of pain that would mark its removal.†   (source)
  • I was confounded and amused and it became quite a contest, with me trying to keep the two of us in touch with reality and with her casting me in fantasies in which I was Brother Taboo-with-whom-all-things-are-possible.†   (source)
  • I felt the outside air explode around me and I stood just beyond the door laughing with the sudden relief of the joke restored, looking back at the defiant old man in his long-billed cap and the confounded eyes of the crowd.†   (source)
  • I looked at Ras on his horse and at their handful of guns and recognized the absurdity of the whole night and of the simple yet confoundingly complex arrangement of hope and desire, fear and hate, that had brought me here still running, and knowing now who I was and where I was and knowing too that I had no longer to run for or from the Jacks and the Emersons and the Bledsoes and Nortons, but only from their confusion, impatience, and refusal to recognize the beautiful absurdity of their American identity and mine.†   (source)
  • I'm asking you to explain to us why we should let you go on with this confounded circus, not ask for your resignation.†   (source)
  • When he spoke of John on the isle of Patmos, taken up in the spirit on the Lord's day, to behold things past, present, and to come, saying: "He which is filthy, let him be filthy still," it was he who, crying these words in a loud voice, was utterly confounded; when he spoke of David, the shepherd boy, raised by God's power to be the King of Israel, it was he who, while they shouted: "Amen!" and: "Hallelujah!" struggled once more in his chains; when he spoke of the day of Pentecost when the Holy Ghost had come down on the apostles who tarried in the upper room, causing them to speak in tongues of fire, he thought of his own baptism and how he had offended the Holy Ghost.†   (source)
  • He felt that light shone down on him from Heaven, on him, the chosen; he felt as Christ must have felt in the temple, facing His so utterly confounded elders; and he lifted up his eyes, not caring for their glances or their clearing of throats, and the silence that abruptly settled over the table, thinking: "Yes.†   (source)
  • Why he should get a new lease on life from teasing, perplexing, confounding an old man who sat half-asleep, witless and innocent as an ancient bull with a ring through its nose—who could tell?†   (source)
  • I dream a strange confounded dream in which intimations of bliss are transfused with lacerating pain.†   (source)
  • Invariably, lines of boxcars stood waiting there, dun-colored backdrop to blurred, confounding tableaux of cruelty, mayhem and madness.†   (source)
  • He felt as if he had lead in his stomach, and when that confounded speech for the Dairyman's League came into his mind, or the thought of Miller standing in a doorway watching him, or the memory of the papers piling up on his desk, or Will Hodge Sr forever turning up in unexpected places, staring at him, Clumly's whole chest filled up, or so he imagined, with greenish gas.†   (source)
  • Sophie was utterly confounded, watching him, having thought that the by-play with the chocolate might have been the prelude to something more intimate.†   (source)
  • When this storm broke anew it was horrible—far more threatful than the squabbles and black moments I have described—and its explosive return almost totally confounded me.†   (source)
  • She took his dictation with care, but because of his runaway fervor, in some haste, so it was not until she got down to the job of typing it out for the printer that she began to glimpse seething in that cauldron of historical allusions and dialectical hypotheses and religious imperatives and legal precedents and anthropological propositions the smoky, ominous presence of a single word—repeated several times—which quite baffled and confounded and frightened her, appearing as it did in this otherwise persuasively practical text, this clever polemic which voiced with breezily scurrilous mockery the sly propaganda she had half heard more than once over the Bieganski dinner table.†   (source)
  • Amy, murmuring 'No,' looked quite confounded.†   (source)
    confounded = confused or frustrated
  • Upon which Flora returned to take care of her, and hovered about her on a sofa, intermingling kind offices and incoherent scraps of conversation in a manner so confounding, that whether she pressed the Marshalsea to take a spoonful of unclaimed dividends, for it would do her good; or whether she congratulated Little Dorrit's father on coming into possession of a hundred thousand smelling-bottles; or whether she explained that she put seventy-five thousand drops of spirits of lavender on fifty thousand pounds of lum†   (source)
    confounding = confusing or frustrating
  • The major characteristics discoverable by the stranger in Mr F.'s Aunt, were extreme severity and grim taciturnity; sometimes interrupted by a propensity to offer remarks in a deep warning voice, which, being totally uncalled for by anything said by anybody, and traceable to no association of ideas, confounded and terrified the Mind.†   (source)
    confounded = confused or frustrated
  • He confounded both the doctor's predictions: he neither died nor got up in a fortnight.†   (source)
  • The image of man within is not to be confounded with the garments.†   (source)
  • This is the first half-holiday I have had since I started this confounded tutorship.†   (source)
  • You'll be ludicrous, you're so confounded!†   (source)
  • And as in time results of many deeds are blended So good and evil in the end become confounded.†   (source)
  • They are mostly confounded little martinets.†   (source)
  • Even though they were intimately together, they were confoundingly alone.†   (source)
  • This was one of the tricks the pestilence had of diverting attention and confounding issues.†   (source)
  • "The whole place is a confounded mystery," responded Mallinson.†   (source)
  • It was a confounded piece of tyranny, that was what it was.†   (source)
  • The Marquesa brought out these words very rapidly and vaguely, but the Perichole was confounded.†   (source)
  • For several weeks, indeed, the disease had seemed to make a point of confounding diagnoses.†   (source)
  • Camila stood still, confounded.†   (source)
  • in which Miss Rosa's childhood (that aged and ancient and timeless absence of youth which consisted of a Cassandra-like listening beyond closed doors, of lurking in dim halls filled with that presbyterian effluvium of lugubrious and vindictive anticipation while she waited for the infancy and childhood with which nature had confounded and betrayed her to overtake the precocity of convinced disapprobation regarding any and every thing which could penetrate the walls of that house through the agency of any man, particularly her father, which the aunt seems to have invested her with at birth along with the swaddling clothes) was passed.†   (source)
  • With a lot of motion to it, telling everybody who he was and where he had been, in a tone and manner that was the essence of the man himself, that carried within itself its own confounding and mendacity.†   (source)
  • Cara, where are those confounded pills?†   (source)
  • Not only was furniture confounded; there was scarcely anything left of body or mind by which one could say, "This is he" or "This is she."†   (source)
  • Property was thus appall'd,
    That the self was not the same;
    Single nature's double name
    Neither two nor one was call'd
    Reason in itself confounded
    Saw division grow together...†   (source)
  • Mama was confounded, aghast at the thing, and not even she was so simple-minded as to believe that Grandma, so many years bound to us, would have thought it up herself, as she now apparently claimed.†   (source)
  • Once and for all I will have nothing to do with the beastly inventions of your confounded hairdresser.†   (source)
  • Haller has not alone insulted the majesty of art in that he confounded our beautiful picture gallery with so-called reality and stabbed to death the reflection of a girl with the reflection of a knife; he has in addition displayed the intention of using our theater as a mechanism of suicide and shown himself devoid of humor.†   (source)
  • I could not have placed at the disposal of a jury the evidence, so general and yet so confoundingly specific, so impalpable and yet so disastrous in its terrible consequences—consequences which have affected my client and account for his being here today before the bar of judgment with his life at stake—I could not have done that and have been honest with myself or with this boy.†   (source)
  • Jesus confounded the wise men.†   (source)
  • He thought he saw pride and wealth confounded as an object lesson to the world, and he thought he saw humility crowned and rewarded for the edification of the city.†   (source)
  • She confounded him.†   (source)
  • "What is confounding me," exclaimed the magician, pulling out his hair in tufts, "is that I can't remember whether it is in the future or in the past."†   (source)
  • The king was confounded and ashamed, since this befell in the presence of his grandees and soldier-officers assembled on a high festival and state occasion; but presently the majesty of kingship took him, and he cried out at his son and made him tremble.†   (source)
  • All my life I have had these confounded aspirations towards a certain moral sanity.†   (source)
  • But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding.†   (source)
  • Then she was confounded with the thought of Roberts.†   (source)
  • "A gentleman?" she gasped, confounded, stupefied: "a gentleman HE?"†   (source)
  • I'd get tired of his confounded buoyancy.†   (source)
  • They said 'Confounded fool!' as soon as his back was turned.†   (source)
  • As it is, you have wasted the best part of my day with your confounded imagination.†   (source)
  • I assure you those confounded words of his will not let me sleep.†   (source)
  • And something new, strange, confounding with its emotion, came to life deep in Duane's heart.†   (source)
  • As if I ever stop thinking about the girl and her confounded vowels and consonants.†   (source)
  • Here I have this confounded son of a Dutchman sitting in my own house drinking of my own rum!†   (source)
  • And perceiving that she stood quite confounded: "Never mind me.†   (source)
  • In short, I can stand everything except her confounded hypocrisy.†   (source)
  • Look here, mother: here's a confounded thing!†   (source)
  • Drama is action, sir, action and not confounded philosophy.†   (source)
  • There is no need for you to be so confounded impatient, mister.†   (source)
  • It had been a confounded lonely time—I don't mean while swimming.†   (source)
  • Here," he added, turning to the soldiers, "the buckle-end of your two belts to this confounded Jew."†   (source)
  • Still....But at the moment it presented itself simply as a confounded nuisance.†   (source)
  • Started a confounded long story about some brass pots.†   (source)
  • We don't know what's in the confounded thing, you know!†   (source)
  • "He seems in a confounded hurry," said Dr. Kemp, "but he doesn't seem to be getting on.†   (source)
  • there's nobody listening: neither my genteel relatives nor the secretary of your confounded Union.†   (source)
  • I'll show yet ...I'll ...I'm ready for any confounded thing ...I've been dreaming of it ...Jove!†   (source)
  • And as I remained confounded, she stamped with her foot like a spoilt child.†   (source)
  • The passing people elbowed and jostled them, but their confounded intelligence was arrested.†   (source)
  • Some confounded fellow had apparently accomplished something of the kind—single-handed at that.†   (source)
  • At that he collected himself for a confounded screech.†   (source)
  • This order, as it will be seen, was not to be confounded with the Benedictine nuns of Citeaux.†   (source)
  • Confounded by this lapse into banality, Conseil left his sentence hanging.†   (source)
  • There, however, ended the signs which might have confounded her with a lady of rank.†   (source)
  • Alyosha stood speechless and confounded; he had never expected what he was seeing.†   (source)
  • Utterly confounded, Mr. George awhile stands looking at the knocker.†   (source)
  • FRANK [looking round disparagingly] Do you intend to stick in this confounded place?†   (source)
  • Why did you never give those confounded papers the lie?†   (source)
  • What I then saw confounded and amazed me.†   (source)
  • And as for my confounded laughter, please excuse it, Rodion Romanovitch.†   (source)
  • Sam, stop your confounded pipe, or I shall be after you.†   (source)
  • Mr. Heathcliff, perceiving us all confounded, rose, and expeditiously made the tea himself.†   (source)
  • She doesn't care a button for me—with her confounded little dry manner.†   (source)
  • Of course the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire; but so much for analogy.†   (source)
  • I call it a confounded job to take the thing away from Farebrother.†   (source)
  • Mr. Bumble sat himself down; quite confounded by the oddity of Mr. Grimwig's manner.†   (source)
  • It is one of those facts which have become confounded by a variety of historians.†   (source)
  • What a confounded time this first act takes.†   (source)
  • Legree looked stupefied and confounded; but at last burst forth,—"What!†   (source)
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