Meaning of Puzzle | Babel Free

Definitions

1. The state of feeling confused or mystified because one cannot understand a complicated matter, a problem, etc.; bewilderment, confusion; (countable) often in in a puzzle: an instance of this.
   uncountable
2. A thing such as a complicated matter or a problem which is difficult to make sense of or understand; also, a person who is difficult to make sense of or understand; an enigma.
   countable
3. Often preceded by a descriptive word: a game or toy, or a problem, requiring some effort to complete or work out, which is intended as a pastime and/or to test one's mental ability.
   countable
4. Short for puzzle-peg (“a piece of wood secured under a dog's jaw to keep the dog's nose away from the ground so that it uses the scent in the air to track its quarry, and to prevent the dog from tearing the quarry once found”).
   abbreviation, alt-of, countable, obsolete

Equivalents

Examples

“Certainly, Men in Great Fortunes, are ſtrangers to themſelues, and vvhile they are in the puſle of buſineſſe, they haue no time to tend their Health, either of Body, or Minde.”

“She stopt, felt herself getting into a puzzle, and could not be prevailed on to add another word, not by dint of several minutes of supplication and waiting.”

“My lady—your ladyship. It sounds very strange, and as if it was not natural. I never thought of it before; but, now you have named it, I am all in a puzzle.”

“Where he went after he left the house is a puzzle.”

“To the laſt puzzle propounded, vvhether theſe Archei [vital forces believed to be responsible for alchemical reactions within living bodies] be ſo many ſprigs of the common Soul of the vvorld, or particular ſubſiſtencies of themſelves; there is no great inconvenience in acknovvledging that it may be either vvay.”

“About the painting I have a great puzzle in my head between [George] Vertue, Mr. D'Urry, and Bishop Tanner [Thomas Tanner?].”

“He is a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too obsequious, or not civil enough, to him.”

“He went away on the word, leaving me with a new mystery to think of, a new puzzle to grapple with.”

“Woman's heart and mind are insoluble puzzles to the male. Murder might be condoned or explained, and yet some smaller offence might rankle.”

“crossword puzzle    jigsaw puzzle”

“Upon the whole, he [a person in a cave] looked not unlike that ingenious puzzle, called a reel in a bottle, the marvel of children, (and of some grown people too, myself for one,) who can neither comprehend the mystery how it has got in, or how it is to be taken out.”

“Among other monstrosities in this lumber room was a largeish black japanned box, excellently and ingeniously made some sixty or seventy years ago, and fitted with every imaginable object. […] Everything was perfectly new, and the whole thing, when shut up, was as big as a small, but fat week-end bag. And inside, it fitted together like a puzzle.”

“So I ſent for a carpenter, on the receipt of your recipe, and had a large Puzzle of Oak made for him [a dog], after the pattern of thoſe vvorn by the Squire's Pointers; and I have found it anſvver prodigiouſly.”

CEFR level