verb

confound

kuhn-FOWND

verb

To completely puzzle or baffle someone.

"The magician's trick confounded the entire audience."

"Economists were confounded by the sudden market crash."

To mix up or fail to distinguish between two things.

"It's easy to confound correlation with causation in statistics."

To defeat or ruin someone's plans.

"Her clever counter-argument confounded his whole strategy."

noun

In statistics, a variable that distorts the apparent relationship between two other variables (a "confounding variable").

"Age turned out to be a confound the researchers hadn't controlled for."

How to Use Confound

Learner’s notes

In plain EnglishTo baffle someone, or to mix things up so badly they can't be told apart.

Common mistake

Confound is a bit stronger/more formal than confuse — often used for something that genuinely stumps experts, not just everyday mix-ups.

Easily confused with

confuse →

confounded past tense, confounds plural, confounds singular

Study it as flashcards or scroll it in Flow — saved to your collection.

Can you complete this real example?

The magician's trick _____ the entire audience.

From Old French confondre, from Latin confundere, "to pour together, mix up" — the same root that gives us "confuse".

pound wound sound bound found round hound mound abound ground around rebound