Word.ws English Dictionary

bamboozle

/bæmˈbuː.zl̩/US/bæmˈbu.zl̩/

bamboozle verb: to con, defraud, trick, to make a fool of, to humbug or impose on someone.

Verb

bamboozle (third-person singular simple present bamboozles, present participle bamboozling, simple past and past participle bamboozled)

  1. (informal, transitive) To con, defraud, trick, to make a fool of, to humbug or impose on someone.
    • “Look here, friend,” said I, “if you have anything important to tell us, out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are mistaken in your game; that’s all I have to say.”1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 19”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
    • ‘A clever ruse to bamboozle us.’1936, Norman Lindsay, The Flyaway Highway, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 105
  2. (informal, transitive) To confuse, frustrate or perplex.
    • He's completely bamboozled by the changes in the computer system.
    • "Although Morphy misplays the opening, it does not take him long to bamboozle his opponent."1951 February, “Chess Caviar”, in Chess Review

Noun

bamboozle (plural bamboozles)

  1. (informal, obsolete) A cheat, hoax, or imposition.

bamboozle meaning in Urdu and Malayalam

bamboozle in Urdu

دھوکا دینا, جھانسا دینا

bamboozle in Malayalam

trick, delude, deceive
കബളിപ്പിക്കുക, കളിപ്പിക്കുക, പറ്റിക്കുക, ചതിക്കുക, സൂത്രവിദ്യ പ്രയോഗിക്കുക, വളയ്ക്കുക

Forms of bamboozle

Verb
third-person singular presentbamboozles
present participlebamboozling
past participlebamboozled
pastbamboozled
alternative form (obsolete)bambooze
Noun
pluralbamboozles

Origin of bamboozle

Derivative of 17th-century vernacular bam (“to trick, to con”), which is a derivative of bam in noun use (fraudster, cheat). Possibly from French embobiner.

Words formed from bamboozle

Questions about bamboozle

What does bamboozle mean?
Bamboozle means to con, defraud, trick, to make a fool of, to humbug or impose on someone.
What is bamboozle in Urdu?
Bamboozle in Urdu is دھوکا دینا, جھانسا دینا. See Bamboozle meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is bamboozle?
Bamboozle can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce bamboozle?
Bamboozle is pronounced /bæmˈbuː.zl̩/ (UK).
What is the past tense of bamboozle?
The past tense of bamboozle is bamboozled.

Words near bamboozle in the dictionary

  1. bambooze
  2. bamboozed
  3. bamboozes
  4. bamboozing
  5. bamboozlable
  6. bamboozle
  7. bamboozleable
  8. bamboozled
  9. bamboozlement
  10. bamboozlements
  11. bamboozler

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bamboozle (page history and authors); bamboozle (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); bamboozle (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-bamboozle.wav.

Cite this entry: “bamboozle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bamboozle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.