confounding

verb

1. (form-of, gerund, participle, present)present participle and gerund of confound

noun

1. The act by which things are confounded, or confused.
2. The process by which an apparent association between an exposure and an outcome is actually explained by another factor.

   “Confounding is defined as the confusion or distortion of measures of association between exposure and outcome as a result of third (or more) variable(s).”

adj

1. Confusing, bewildering, baffling or perplexing.

   “We have to with a Heart ſearching God, who will find out every unworthy Communicant to his utter Shame and Confuſion ; when God examins ſuch, his Queſtions will be Nonpluſſing and Confounding,[…]”

   “But, Lord my God, help me so to remember that thou mayest forget them ; so to charge them upon myself, that thou mayest never lay them to my charge ; so to keep them before my eyes, to abase and humble my soul, that thou mayest hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities ; especially those that are so confounding and terrible to my thought.”

   “It is too suggestive and too confounding to be met but in the spirit of study.”

   “Upon which Flora returned to take care of her, and hovered about her on a sofa, intermingling kind offices and incoherent scraps of conversation in a manner so confounding, that whether she pressed the Marshalsea to take a spoonful of unclaimed dividends, for it would do her good ;[…]”

   “Theſe things are very confounding, and no Man can be prepar'd to debate with Men, that will thus go upon all manner of Poſſibilities.”