confusionary

comparative more confusionary · superlative most confusionary

1. uncommonConfused, disordered, in a state of confusion; confusing, leading to a state of confusion.

   Valeria went to a bank, where, after much confusionary explanation, and a quarter of an hour's waiting, she emerged with five thousand francs, and some silver and pence.

   1910, Annie Vivanti, The Devourers, page 188

   5 more examples

   But ſince for the ſake of being fanatically employed in keeping the ſhadows of controverſy in a progreſſive ſtate, and of attempting to ſneer mankind out of the only plain and practical method of interpretation, this writer is frequently obſerving in a confuſionary kind of argumentation, that the church's ſenſe of the articles is different from that of the articles themſelves; if it ſhall be aſked what ſenſe the church has fixed upon them, let it be ſaid once for all, that this ſenſe of the articles muſt be repreſented by the particular doctrines which will ariſe from a literal and grammatical interpretation.

   1779, The Church of England vindicated: or, a defence of the Visible Church of Christ, Exeter: Barnabas Thorn, page 62

   Dr. C.―What sort of a meeting was it? D. D.―It was such an uproarous confusionary meeting, you never se’ed the like on’t. Dr. C.―Who caused the confusion? D. D.―It was caused by that ’ere man speechifying about blapenemy, I thinks they call it. Dr. C.―Speaking blasphemy, I suppose, you mean.

   1849, William M’Ghie, “Priestcraft in Danger—A Drama”, in The Latter-Day Saints’ Millenial Star, volume 11, number 10, page 159

   The official organ of the P. S. D. F. is Le Socialiste, a weekly newspaper which attacks, at times quite vehemently, the Reformatory Socialists, whom it calls "Confusionary Socialists."

   [1905, A. and H. Hamon, “The Political Situation in France”, in American Journal of Sociology, volume 11, page 125

   The aged crafty nummifeed confusionary overinsured everlapsing accentuated katekattershin clopped, clopped, clopped, darsey dobrey, back and along the danzing corridor, as she was going to pimpim him, way boy wally, not without her complement of cavarnan men, between the two deathdealing allied divisions and the lines of readypresent fire of the corkedagains upstored, […]

   1967 [1939], James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake, New York: Viking Press, page 333

   While, taken too literally, Szilard's paper was unfortunately also the source of many confusionary speculations concerning the contribution of the Subject (or the Cartesian Cogito in more philosophically palatable terms) to the Object's thermodynamical entropy, sometimes appealing to the wrong claim that Subject's measurements are necessary thermodynamically-irreversible processes […]

   2004, Gavriel Segre, “The No Cloning Theorem versus the Second Law of Thermodynamics”, in arXiv