Baffle /(băf"f'l)/

imp. & p. p. Baffled; p. pr. & vb. n. Baffling

1. To cause to undergo a disgraceful punishment, as a recreant knight. [Obs.]

   He by the heels him hung upon a tree, And baffled so, that all which passed by The picture of his punishment might see.

2. To check by shifts and turns; to elude; to foil.

   The art that baffles time's tyrannic claim.

3. To check by perplexing; to disconcert, frustrate, or defeat; to thwart.

   A suitable scripture ready to repel and baffle them all.

   Calculations so difficult as to have baffled, until within a . . . recent period, the most enlightened nations.

   The mere intricacy of a question should not baffle us.

1. To practice deceit. [Obs.]
2. To struggle against in vain; as, a ship baffles with the winds. [R.]

1. A defeat by artifice, shifts, and turns; discomfiture. [R.]
2. A deflector, as a plate or wall, so arranged across a furnace or boiler flue as to mingle the hot gases and deflect them against the substance to be heated. (Engin.)
3. A lever for operating the throttle valve of a winding engine. (Coal Mining) [Local, U. S.]