confound
From time to time, you may have the misfortune of engaging in a project which does not go quiet as planned. These instances are always a true test of one’s personality, where the panicky worrywarts are separated from the insensitive thugs.
When you are progressing along smoothly, relatively confident that you know what you are doing, and then quiet suddenly things get weird, stop making sense, or don’t fit together as they should, you may find yourself utterly bewildered, a little stupefied, perhaps even a bit amazed. Airline pilots experience this frequently with today’s new, computer-driven aircraft – the airplane’s electronic brain may decide to make a maneuver the pilots didn’t command, leaving them to wonder, “Why’d it do that?”
Similarly, if you are trying to accomplish something and find that operations do not go as planned, you may do a double-take at an unexpected and surprising result, step back a bit, cock your head, and wonder, “What the-?!”
At this point, you (and the pilots) are confounded (kun’FOUND). You are bewildered, confused, perplexed. You may even be amazed.
In distinguishing confound from its more commonplace counterparts, such as ‘confuse’, we typically note a degree of astounding in confounding. In fact, you might even think of confound as a fusion of “confuse” and “astound” – confound. Thus, to be confounded is to be more than just confused; it is to be dumbfounded, dazed, taken aback, nonplussed, flabbergasted, and so on. You’re still confused, you’re just confused in a rather amazing way.
For example: You plant a tree, thinking that in a week or two, it will have grown perhaps an inch. You do not realize, however, that this is an amazing miracle tree. When you check on it the next day, it has sprouted thirteen feet and punched through the neighbor’s fence and fouled an overhead electrical line. As you stagger backwards in awe and confusion, trying to comprehend how a tree could grow thirteen feet in a day, you are confounded. (You are also, incidentally, about to be instantly rich, as you would have solved the global deforestation problem. Congratulations.)
If you think this example a bit unrealistic, try having children. Any parent will tell you in a heartbeat that as your children grow and get equal parts creative and destructive, you will – more than once – be confounded by their behavior and judgment of what constitute acceptable pastimes, clothing, friends, snacks, sleeping patterns, and pretty much everything else.
Editor’s Note: This post has been written by Mark Jacobs, an editor-in-training at the Jet Fuel Review. Mark is a newly recruited editor for The Jet Fuel Review and Blog. He is an Aviation major, but the left side of his brain is an avid writer. Mark is a sophomore and will be working a few hours as a tutor in the Writing Center in the 2011-2012 school year.
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