flummox
/ˈflʌməks/verb
flummox is a verb meaning “To confuse; to fluster; to flabbergast” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-L-U-M-M-O-X and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 46 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does flummox mean?
verb
- 1
To confuse; to fluster; to flabbergast.
- 2
To give in, to give up, to collapse.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce flummox?
- /ˈflʌməks/
Flummox has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-flummox.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Naomi_Persephone_Amethyst_(NaomiAmethyst)-flummox.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of flummox
- flummoxes present, singular, he/she/it
- flummoxing participle, present
- flummoxed participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is flummox?
Flummox appears about once in every 46 million words in written English, the 209,386th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Flummox in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense To confuse; to fluster; to flabbergast:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | troubler, embrouiller |
| German | verwirren, verblüffen |
| Spanish | desconcertar, trastrocar, trastocar, aturdir, trastornar, barahustar |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does flummox come from?
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.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).