c.1290, "overthrow, ruin," from O.Fr.
confusion (11c.), from L.
confusionem, noun of action from
confundere "to pour together," also "to confuse" (see
confound). Sense of "a putting to shame" (a sort of mental "overthrow") is c.1340, while that of "mental perplexity" is from 1596. The history of the word
confuse is, in a word, confused. Latin
confusus was the pp. of
confundere, and thus
confused existed in M.E. from c.1330 as the pp. of
confound. The L. pp. also became an adj. in O.Fr., meaning "discomfited in mind or feeling," and it passed to M.E. as
confus (14c.; e.g. Chaucer: "I am so confus, that I may not seye"), which was then assimilated to Eng. pp. pattern by addition of
-ed. From this, a new verb,
confuse, was derived c.1550, with the literal sense "mix or mingle things so as to render the elements indistinguishable." In the active, figurative sense of "discomfit in mind or feeling,"
confuse is only recorded from 1805. This activity could have been expressed before that by native constructions like
dumbfound and
flabbergast, or by
confound.
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