befogged

English

Adjective

befogged (comparative more befogged, superlative most befogged)

1. Obscured with fog or smoke; murky.
   • 1614, John Taylor, “Plutoes Proclamation concerning his Infernall pleasure for the Propagation of Tobacco” in The Nipping and Snipping of Abuses, London: Nathaniel Butter, ^[1]

     […] euery one a Furies shape assumes,

     Befog’d and clouded with my hel-hatch’d fumes.

   • 1852 July, Herman Melville, “Book V. Misgivings and Preparatives.”, in Pierre: Or, The Ambiguities, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, section V, page 142:

     Standing half-befogged upon the mountain of his Fate, all that part of the wide panorama was wrapped in clouds to him; but anon those concealings slid aside, or rather, a quick rent was made in them; […]

   • 1892, Henry James, “Sir Dominick Ferrand”, in The Real Thing and Other Tales‎^[2], New York: Macmillan, published 1893, page 46:

     Peter Baron, as he sat in his corner while the train stopped, considered, in the befogged gaslight, the bookstall standard of literature and asked himself whose character had fallen to pieces now.

2. (nautical) Caught in fog.
   • 1635, Luke Foxe, North-west Fox‎^[3], London: Thomas Fawcet, page 171:

     […] this morning he was close aboard the N. Coast, it seemeth high ragged land and full of guts, he was becalmed and befogged, and stood S. wards into the channell […]

   • 1912, Theodore Goodridge Roberts, chapter 20, in Blessington’s Folly‎^[4], London: John Long, page 306:

     The fact is, he knew every rock, the set of every current at every season of the year, and in his younger days had often gone to the assistance of befogged vessels and piloted them safely into harbour or clear of the coast.

3. Confused, muddled.
   • 1607, Arthur Dent, The Plaine Mans Path-way to Heauen‎^[5], London: Edward Bishop, page 254:

     […] you speake you wot not what, you are altogether befogd and benighted in this question.

   • 1894, Ivan Dexter, Talmud: A Strange Narrative of Central Australia, published in serial form in Port Adelaide News and Lefevre's Peninsula Advertiser (SA), Chapter XXIX,^[6]

     If I could only get back to the inscription or the grotto I felt the rest would be easy to accomplish, but the more I rambled the more utterly befogged I got.

   • 1914 October – 1916 July, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Mucker, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., published 31 October 1921, →OCLC:

     […] so that quite a perceptible interval of time elapsed before the true dimensions of the affront to his dignity commenced to percolate into the befogged and pain-racked convolutions of his brain.

Derived terms

• unbefogged

 

Translations

obscured with fog

• Czech: zamlžený m, pod mlhou m

Verb

befogged

1. simple past and past participle of befog