Definition of "mystification" []

• The act or an instance of mystifying. (noun)
• The fact or condition of being mystified. (noun)
• Something intended to mystify. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The mystification is artfully explained by the extraordinary likeness of the two sisters."
• "All this is that you may not misunderstand my simile of 'pawns in chess,' made for the gratification of self-mystification, which is a woman's foible."
• "Having lived from childhood in a quiet country parsonage, with my father and mother, and a sister younger than myself, as my sole companions, "mystification" -- that is, telling deliberate falsehoods by way of a joke -- was a perfectly novel idea to me; and, when that joke involved the possibility of such serious consequences as offending the tutor under whose care we were placed, I (wholly ignorant of the impudence and recklessness of public school boys) considered such"