dazzle

present singular third person dazzles · participle present dazzling · participle past dazzled · past dazzled

1. transitiveTo confuse or overpower the sight of (someone or something, such as a sensor) by means of excessive brightness.

   Antidrone lasers can burn or dazzle a drone's sensors.

   3 more examples

   Dazzled by the headlights of the lorry, the deer stopped in the middle of the street.

   Those heavenly shapes / Will dazzle now the earthly, with their blaze / Insufferably bright.

   1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC

   An unreflected light did never yet / Dazzle the vision feminine.

   1834, Henry Taylor, Philip van Artevelde, volume 1, page 45

2. figurativelytransitiveTo render incapable of thinking clearly; to overwhelm with showiness or brilliance.

   The delegates were dazzled by the originality of his arguments.

   Synonyms: impress, overpower

3. intransitiveTo be overpowered by light; to be confused by excess of brightness.

   […] I dare not trust these Eyes; / They Dance in Mists, and dazle with surprize.

   1675, John Dryden, Aureng-zebe: A Tragedy

   1 more example

   For we see, that an over-light maketh the Eyes dazel, insomuch as perpetual looking against the Sun, would cause blindness.

   1626, Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum: or, A Natural History in Ten Centuries

plural dazzles

1. countableuncountableA light of dazzling brilliancy.
2. countablefigurativelyuncountableShowy brilliance that may stop a person from thinking clearly.
3. collectivecountableuncommonuncountableA herd of zebra.

   A group of zebras can be called a dazzle.

   2019 June 6, “A gaggle, a confusion and a conspiracy - bizarre animal collective group names”, in BBC

   3 more examples

   We were trying to stalk a dazzle of zebra which flashed in and out of a long strip of green and yellow fever trees, with an ostrich, its feathers flared like a ballet skirt around its dancing legs, on their flank, when suddenly […]

   1958, Laurens Van der Post, The lost world of the Kalahari: with the great and the little memory (1998 David Coulson edition)

   Zebras move in herds which are known as "dazzles." When a lion approaches a dazzle of zebras during its hunt, […]

   2009, Darren Paul Shearer, In You God Trusts, page 176

   I reached the lodge as a dazzle of zebras trotted across the dirt road into thorny scrub by the game fence, and a lone kudu gazed up at me from the short grass near the swimming pool.

   2010, Douglas Rogers, The Last Resort: A Memoir of Mischief and Mayhem on a Family Farm in Africa, page 22

4. uncountableDazzle camouflage.