befogged

comparative more befogged · superlative most befogged

1. Obscured with fog or smoke; murky.

   1614, John Taylor, “Plutoes Proclamation concerning his Infernall pleasure for the Propagation of Tobacco” in The Nipping and Snipping of Abuses, London: Nathaniel Butter, […] euery one a Furies shape assumes, Befog’d and clouded with my hel-hatch’d fumes.

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   Standing half-befogged upon the mountain of his Fate, all that part of the wide panorama was wrapped in clouds to him; but anon those concealings slid aside, or rather, a quick rent was made in them; […]

   1852 July, Herman Melville, “Book V. Misgivings and Preparatives.”, in Pierre: Or, The Ambiguities, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, section V, page 142

   Peter Baron, as he sat in his corner while the train stopped, considered, in the befogged gaslight, the bookstall standard of literature and asked himself whose character had fallen to pieces now.

   1892, Henry James, “Sir Dominick Ferrand”, in The Real Thing and Other Tales, New York: Macmillan, published 1893, page 46

2. nauticalCaught in fog.

   […] this morning he was close aboard the N. Coast, it seemeth high ragged land and full of guts, he was becalmed and befogged, and stood S. wards into the channell […]

   1635, Luke Foxe, North-west Fox, London: Thomas Fawcet, page 171

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   The fact is, he knew every rock, the set of every current at every season of the year, and in his younger days had often gone to the assistance of befogged vessels and piloted them safely into harbour or clear of the coast.

   1912, Theodore Goodridge Roberts, chapter 20, in Blessington’s Folly, London: John Long, page 306

3. Confused, muddled.

   […] you speake you wot not what, you are altogether befogd and benighted in this question.

   1607, Arthur Dent, The Plaine Mans Path-way to Heauen, London: Edward Bishop, page 254

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   1894, Ivan Dexter, Talmud: A Strange Narrative of Central Australia, published in serial form in Port Adelaide News and Lefevre's Peninsula Advertiser (SA), Chapter XXIX, If I could only get back to the inscription or the grotto I felt the rest would be easy to accomplish, but the more I rambled the more utterly befogged I got.

   Limpet said the effect of this method was to give "Vibration," an explanation which left the curate hopelessly befogged.

   1913, Norman Lindsay, A Curate in Bohemia, Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Co., published 1932, page 75

   […] so that quite a perceptible interval of time elapsed before the true dimensions of the affront to his dignity commenced to percolate into the befogged and pain-racked convolutions of his brain.

   1914 October – 1916 July, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Mucker, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., published 31 October 1921, →OCLC

1. participlepastsimple past and past participle of befog