My friend Avery wrote me that bewildered is her new favorite word. "A few weeks ago, in a ghost story set in Victorian England and written (more or less) in the style of that period, I read of an insane asylum referred to as a 'home for the bewildered.' Is that great or what? Since then I’ve been seeing the word everywhere and I just love it more every time I come across it." According to my Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology, bewilder dates to 1684, first occurring in the past participial form bewildered: be, thoroughly + now archaic wilder, lead astry or into the wilds, probably back formation from wilderness, on the analogy of wander.
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