What is "perplexity"

Usage examples of "perplexity".

XIV BY FIVE DAYS Captain Slade meant the five since he had left the Olive Branch in the harbor of Morlaix, where that patient barque still lay with all her cargo, and a great deal of perplexity aboard her.

The hesitation of the orthodox casuists on this interesting subject, betrays the perplexity of men, unwilling to approve an institution which they were compelled to tolerate.

He paltered, shifting on his feet, his brow contracted in perplexity, as if I had propounded some intricate trifle of the higher mathematics.

Planting himself on this ground, surrounding himself with these evidences, the reverential Christian will at least for a long time to come cling firmly to the accepted fact of the resurrection of Christ, regardless of whatever misgivings and perplexities may trouble the mind of the iconoclastic and critical truth seeker.

Jones and I had been watching her perplexity, as we came up the Strada della Madonna, and having a stouter knife than hers offered to help her.

In this perplexity he had recourse to his usual expedient, of submitting to the wisdom of Trajan an impartial, and, in some respects, a favorable account of the new superstition, requesting the emperor, that he would condescend to resolve his doubts, and to instruct his ignorance.

In this perplexity, the genius of Mahomet conceived and executed a plan of a bold and marvellous cast, of transporting by land his lighter vessels and military stores from the Bosphorus into the higher part of the harbor.

What is more, we must be willing to befriend our perplexity as a way of dying to our futile efforts to grasp the ungraspable depths that meditation invites us to discover.

As for me, it has been a source of perplexity for years: so much so, that I began to wonder at times whether I was not under some mental delusion about it, until the strange theatrical displays, of the last few months, for which I was more or less prepared, led so many to use their eyes, unmuzzled by brass or glass, for a time.

Doctor Gozzi, who was an ubiquitarian, made to all those questions answers which had not even the shadow of good sense, and which of course had no other effect than to increase a hundred-fold the perplexity of his poor mother.

At first I expressed some perplexity at the questions having emanated from her royal highness, and I told her afterwards that I understood cabalism, but that I could not interpret the meaning of the answers obtained through it, and that her highness must ask new questions likely to render the answers easier to be understood.

Marable, her eternal Battenberg in her hands, looked up through the meshes of a perplexity, as visible as if it were a veritable network, at Gladys, who was standing in the recess of the bay-window, a book in her hand.

The bravest usurpers were compelled, by the perplexity of their situation, to conclude ignominious treaties with the common enemy, to purchase with oppressive tributes the neutrality or services of the Barbarians, and to introduce hostile and independent nations into the heart of the Roman monarchy.

Another was a spirit of accommodation that prompted him to take the needs, difficulties and perplexities of anybody and everybody upon his own shoulders at any and all times, and dispose of them with admirable facility and alacrity--hence he always managed to find vacant beds in crowded inns, and plenty to eat in the emptiest larders.

The man who is delivered from great perplexity, no matter by what means, feels himself relieved.