- perplexing or bewildering: He’s hosting an evening of readings from some of the most sensational and confounding cases of Sherlock Holmes.
- throwing someone or something into confusion or disorder: Still in shock, his wife broke the confounding news that their only son had been killed by a stray bullet.
- interacting with both the dependent and independent variables in an experiment or study, making it impossible to determine a causal effect between them:The authors list potential confounding factors, but it is not clear from the paper whether all of these were controlled for in the analyses.
- the act of perplexing, bewildering, causing confusion or disorder, etc.: The Jaredite civilization is supposed to have formed in the wake of the miraculous confounding of languages at the Tower of Babel.
- the act of treating or viewing different things as if they were the same: I have always found the confounding of Christmas and Hanukkah disturbing.
