as in confusing
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as in baffling
to throw into a state of mental uncertainty
troops disoriented by the sudden change in battle plans
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of disorienting
The Week Us,
TheWeek,
30 June 2026
Career vertigo is the disorienting feeling that the assumptions and strategies that once guided your professional life no longer provide the same sense of stability or direction.
—
Caroline Castrillon,
Forbes.com,
29 June 2026
The disorienting change will be tricky to implement in a way that appeals to risk-averse US financial institutions and other firms, according to former Treasury officials, sanctions attorneys and industry sources monitoring the process.
—
Daniel Flatley,
Fortune,
28 June 2026
Peterson’s unpredictable, last-minute and sudden in-game absences were the backbone for a disorienting season — and the foundation for doubt.
—
Sam McDowell,
Kansas City Star,
24 June 2026
Alfa’s jazz background shines in the album’s disorienting moments.
—
H.d. Angel,
Pitchfork,
16 June 2026
With essentially no right angles or corners—which are thought by some, possibly including Gleason, to attract evil spirits—the architecture had a pleasantly disorienting quality.
—
Bruce Handy,
New Yorker,
15 June 2026
Yamashita’s mixture of archival material and original fiction can be disorienting, and so can the book’s cacophony of voices.
—
Literary Hub,
28 May 2026
Protect your claim right away The moments after an impact are disorienting.
—
Ascend Agency,
Baltimore Sun,
27 May 2026
Gabby Sartori,
USA Today,
25 June 2026
This doesn’t discredit the fact that mental and physical changes from menopause can be disorienting and jarring.
—
Helen Carefoot,
Flow Space,
17 June 2026
The episode is a revealing moment in a story that Pancevski broke large parts of in the Journal in 2023, and a useful glimpse at Washington’s — and the world’s — disorienting fog of war in a broken information environment.
—
Ben Smith,
semafor.com,
15 June 2026
After an extended and purposely disorienting opening that takes its sweet time to develop, Margaret and Daniel dodge suited agents working for a secret government protector outfit called WARDEX.
—
Randy Myers,
Mercury News,
9 June 2026
No One Talks About Retirement often begins with a subtle but disorienting shift.
—
James Mayer Jr,
Forbes.com,
1 June 2026
Out with the Old, in with the Letterboxd Hollywood has always been obsessed with youth, but the current generational turnover happening inside entertainment has been especially disorienting for several reasons.
—
Alison Foreman,
IndieWire,
31 May 2026
Too much red, meanwhile, risks disorienting penguins, whose eyes can’t perceive it (likely because red light does not deeply penetrate the ocean, which is their primary hunting environment).
—
Oscar Holland,
CNN Money,
25 May 2026
With Teutonic deadpan, Sander sends up the often ideologically weighted social photography of which his project is an example—and records the giddy, glitchy instability of the Weimar years, when the old order was in disorienting flux, and would soon disappear altogether.
—
Max Norman,
New Yorker,
21 May 2026
Adjective
Because Jenkin films on grainy 16mm and overdubs his actors’ dialogue, said Tim Grierson in the Los Angeles Times, his movies have a disorienting effect.
—
The Week Us,
TheWeek,
30 June 2026
Career vertigo is the disorienting feeling that the assumptions and strategies that once guided your professional life no longer provide the same sense of stability or direction.
—
Caroline Castrillon,
Forbes.com,
29 June 2026
The disorienting change will be tricky to implement in a way that appeals to risk-averse US financial institutions and other firms, according to former Treasury officials, sanctions attorneys and industry sources monitoring the process.
—
Daniel Flatley,
Fortune,
28 June 2026
Peterson’s unpredictable, last-minute and sudden in-game absences were the backbone for a disorienting season — and the foundation for doubt.
—
Sam McDowell,
Kansas City Star,
24 June 2026
Alfa’s jazz background shines in the album’s disorienting moments.
—
H.d. Angel,
Pitchfork,
16 June 2026
With essentially no right angles or corners—which are thought by some, possibly including Gleason, to attract evil spirits—the architecture had a pleasantly disorienting quality.
—
Bruce Handy,
New Yorker,
15 June 2026
Yamashita’s mixture of archival material and original fiction can be disorienting, and so can the book’s cacophony of voices.
—
Literary Hub,
28 May 2026
Protect your claim right away The moments after an impact are disorienting.
—
Ascend Agency,
Baltimore Sun,
27 May 2026
Verb
In the Victoria Room, a centerpiece of kaleidoscopes and angled mirrors creates a shifting, disorienting effect that echoes Alice’s world, surrounded by lush seasonal plantings.
—
Gabby Sartori,
USA Today,
25 June 2026
This doesn’t discredit the fact that mental and physical changes from menopause can be disorienting and jarring.
—
Helen Carefoot,
Flow Space,
17 June 2026
The episode is a revealing moment in a story that Pancevski broke large parts of in the Journal in 2023, and a useful glimpse at Washington’s — and the world’s — disorienting fog of war in a broken information environment.
—
Ben Smith,
semafor.com,
15 June 2026
After an extended and purposely disorienting opening that takes its sweet time to develop, Margaret and Daniel dodge suited agents working for a secret government protector outfit called WARDEX.
—
Randy Myers,
Mercury News,
9 June 2026
No One Talks About Retirement often begins with a subtle but disorienting shift.
—
James Mayer Jr,
Forbes.com,
1 June 2026
Out with the Old, in with the Letterboxd Hollywood has always been obsessed with youth, but the current generational turnover happening inside entertainment has been especially disorienting for several reasons.
—
Alison Foreman,
IndieWire,
31 May 2026
Too much red, meanwhile, risks disorienting penguins, whose eyes can’t perceive it (likely because red light does not deeply penetrate the ocean, which is their primary hunting environment).
—
Oscar Holland,
CNN Money,
25 May 2026
With Teutonic deadpan, Sander sends up the often ideologically weighted social photography of which his project is an example—and records the giddy, glitchy instability of the Weimar years, when the old order was in disorienting flux, and would soon disappear altogether.
—
Max Norman,
New Yorker,
21 May 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for disorienting
Adjective
-
Devine told me that e-bike and moped marketing is confusing and regulations keeping e-bikes safely classified are cloudy.
-
That could be confusing to general audiences, especially those accustomed to seeing the heat index instead.
Verb
-
The Illinois numbers, especially this year’s, are baffling experts.
-
For more than four minutes Darnold drove downfield, connecting on three of four passes, baffling the pass rushers, bleeding the clock, and by the time the Seahawks finally gave the ball back, the Rams had only 25 seconds to live.
Adjective
-
For some perplexing reason, Gia has decided to die on the hill that Ava is lying, despite having no way to prove that and despite the fact that Ava has no reason to lie.
-
Some viewers at home, however, found the clue perplexing, noting that the clue could also be read as referring to the two most recent Best Song winners.
Verb
-
Similarly, the defensively bewildering 9-6 loss the Wild suffered to start Round 2 in Colorado set the tone for five games that would ultimately be their undoing.
-
But even more than engaging the big ideas that Emma’s revelation triggers — pun somewhat intended — Lee and Borli wanted to craft an experience that would mimic its main characters’ bewildering interiority.
Adjective
-
Grief is one of the most confounding aspects of the human experience.
-
In 2021, one year into D’Amaro’s tenure and following COVID shutdowns, Disney did away with FastPass and introduced a confounding and very costly series of pay-to-skip passes, which require timing advanced booking of limited slots in these formerly free-to-enter shorter lines.
Verb
-
Just after send time yesterday morning, the Timberwolves made a puzzling splash by trading for Hornets star LaMelo Ball.
-
And the performances from South Korea at the World Cup so far have been puzzling, given the talent at manager Hong Myung-bo’s disposal.
Adjective
-
The Mets’ continual snub of Hall of Famer Carter, a pivotal player in the team’s history as the first building block of the 1986 championship club, is both mystifying and downright embarrassing.
-
The outlandish and mystifying story received nearly wall-to-wall coverage, but the plane was never found.
Adjective
-
Vermeule—a former clerk for Scalia—proposes that conservatives should read the Constitution’s ambiguous phrases and general structure in an openly moral way, drawing on principles grounded in the nature and purposes of government.
-
Without a unified, clean, and accessible data structure, AI outputs quickly become ambiguous, hallucinated, and diluted, deepening the clarity crisis rather than resolving it.
Cite this Entry
“Disorienting.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/disorienting. Accessed 5 Jul. 2026.
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