Etymology

flummox

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Today it means: To confuse; to fluster; to flabbergast. Full definition →

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The story

Uncertain, probably risen out of a British dialect (OED finds candidate words in Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, southern Cheshire, and Sheffield). The formation seems to be onomatopœic, expressive of the notion of throwing down roughly and untidily. [OED]. First use appears c. 1837 in the writings of Charles Dickens.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.