confusion

confusion 1 Confusion, disorder, chaos, disarray, jumble, clutter, snarl, muddle are comparable when they mean the state or a condition in which things are not in their right places or arranged in their right relations to each other, or an instance of such a state or condition.

Confusion suggests such mixing or mingling as obliterates clear demarcation or distinction; disorder (see also DISEASE) implies lack or more frequently disturbance or breach of due order or arrangement; thus, a busy worker might leave his desk in confusion with objects mingled together and no arrangement apparent to an observer, but a burglar searching it for money would probably leave it in disorder with contents thrown about and out of their normal (though not necessarily orderly) arrangement

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the dark confusion of German history— Guérard

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mid the misery and confusion of an unjust war— Shelley

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cowardice has succeeded to courage, disorder to discipline— Dickinson

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our last chance to substitute order for disorder, government for anarchy— E. B. White

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Chaos suggests an absolute or sometimes hopeless confusion suggestive of the ancient Greek conception of Chaos as the unorganized state of primordial matter before the creation of distinct and orderly forms; the term therefore more often implies innate lack of organization rather than disturbance of an existent order

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the Essays of Montaigne ... a chaos indeed, but a chaos swarming with germs of evolution— J. R. Lowell

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When chaos does imply a disturbing, it usually suggests a reducing to the utter confusion of primordial matter

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back not merely to the dark ages but from cosmos to chaos— Baruch

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Disarray, more even than disorder, implies disarrangement; it is therefore preferable when the breaking up of order or discipline is to be suggested

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the disarray into which society had been thrown by this deplorable affair made their presence in town more necessary than ever— Wharton

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Jumble implies the mixing of incongruous things with resulting confusion

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the house they lived in .. . was a heterogeneous architectural jumble— Meredith

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Clutter implies confusion and crowding and often suggests a disagreeable or more or less messy state

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Lord, what a mess this set is in! If there's one thing I hate above everything else . . . it's clutter— Millay

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Snarl, basically applied to a tangle of filaments (as hairs or threads), implies confusion and entanglement and suggests great difficulty in unraveling and ordering

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his affairs are in a snarl

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held up by a traffic snarl

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Muddle (compare muddle at CONFUSE 1) also implies confusion and entanglement, but in addition it suggests the influence of bungling and a more or less hopeless condition

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we both grub on in a muddle— Dickens

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the world's been confused and poor, a thorough muddle; there's never been a real planned education for people— H. G. Wells

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Analogous words: derangement, disarrangement, disorganization, disturbance (see corresponding verbs at DISORDER): *din, babel, pandemonium, hullabaloo: *anarchy, lawlessness

Contrasted words: ordering or order, systematization, organization (see corresponding verbs at ORDER): system, *method

2 *commotion, agitation, tumult, turmoil, turbulence, convulsion, upheaval

Analogous words: disorder, disorganization, disturbance (see corresponding verbs at DISORDER): perturbation, agitation, disquiet, upset (see corresponding verbs at DISCOMPOSE): discomfiture, embarrassment (see corresponding verbs at EMBARRASS)