879: dumbfound and confound May 5, 2017

Though you may be found dumb when your dumbfounded, relationship between those words is not quite as simple as that. This word does come from the element, 'dumb' but the second part comes from a different 'found'. While the more common way to find 'found' is when it means 'to come upon' or 'discover', it also means 'to mix', and since it isn't just a participle, it can appear as 'she founds' in the present tense. This may be more familiar to people in other forms, such as 'foundry' where metal is cast. In that case, the metal is physically mixed, but this also has taken on the same meaning as 'mixed up', i.e. 'confused'. Unsurprisingly perhaps, both 'confound' and 'confuse' which each relate to mental states, come from the same root as 'dumbfound'. 'Confuse' was not always synonymous with 'confound though, and for a while had the sense of causing upheaval in a ruinous way, such as among a group of people. Not only that, but it entered English from a French participle, and retained only a passive meaning as 'confused', but eventually through back-formation, 'confuse' appeared and now is more common than 'confound'.