befogs

Verb

befog (third-person singular simple present befogs, present participle befogging, simple past and past participle befogged)

1. To envelop in fog or smoke.
   • Clouds of the most expensive incense befog the chancel […]1916, E. F. Benson, “The Spiritual Pastor”, in The Freaks of Mayfair, London: T.N. Foulis, page 186
2. To confuse, mystify (a person); to make less acute or perceptive, to cloud (a person’s faculties).
   • The voice of interested sycophancy is apt to fill their ears and to befog their judgment.1871, Carl Schurz, Speech in the U.S. Senate, 27 January, 1871, in Frederic Bancroft (ed.), Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, New York: Putnam, 1913, Volume II, p. 151
3. To obscure, make less clear (a subject, issue, etc.).
   • How they had managed to befog the subject! What elaborate show-structures they had built up, with no result but to obscure the horizon!1880, [Henry Brooks Adams], chapter V, in Democracy: An American Novel (Leisure-hour Series; no. 112), New York, N.Y.: Henry Holt and Company, →OCLC, page 84