Definition of "perplexity" []

• The state of being perplexed or puzzled. (noun)
• The state of being intricate or complicated: "the perplexity of life in twentieth-century America” ( Daniel J. Boorstin). (noun)
• Something that perplexes. (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.

• "Joe queried, glancing in perplexity from the picture to 'Frisco Kid's face."
• "Under any other circumstances, Romola would have been sensitive to the appeal at the beginning of Savonarola's speech; but at this moment she was so utterly in antagonism with him, that what he called perplexity seemed to her sophistry and doubleness; and as he went on, his words only fed that flame of indignation, which now again, more fully than ever before, lit up the memory of all his mistakes, and made her trust in him seem to have been a purblind delusion."
• "So George W. Bush's visage of belligerent perplexity is currently airbrushed out of the special collector's edition commemorative display plate version of the past, because ... well, because not only was he a blistering embarrassment to the conservative movement, but because his policies are the exact ones they want to vote back into office two weeks from now."