Befuddled???

A. Unabashed Pacifist:

Horrified, a dove looked down on the field of battle. “Never again,” she said.

B. Unabashed Christian:

Holy One,

I focus this morning on your liberalism. You liberate people – from bondage to systems, to pain, misery, fear, abuse, slavery, disease, war, famine. Whatever would hold us down, you are the force that lifts us again. In addition, you allow us to make our own choices, even choices that might not be in our best interests. You love us, bleeding heart liberal that you are, so much so that you give us the option of rejecting you, when your wish is that we will choose to accept the embrace of your love.

I do think you draw a line, however, if in our freedom we bring harm to others, when we begin to enslave them. For you are always a freeing God, as much as you are anything else. You are also a free God – free of our control and free of charge. Thank you very much!
Amen

C. Un-quoting Jesus:

“Hold up, guys. I need to make a pit stop.”

[He probably had the need, but He never said it like this.]

D. Blog: Word of the Week -- Befuddled??

[From thefreedictionary.com]:

Verb
1. befuddle - be confusing or perplexing to; cause to be unable to think clearly; "These questions confuse even the experts"; "This question completely threw me"; "This question befuddled even the teacher"
2. befuddle - make stupid with alcohol

[FYI, there is a website related to the second definition: Befuddle is the original home of drunk celebrity pictures. Befuddle pays homage to drunk celebrities. www.befuddle.co.uk/]

[For more, read Charles Hodgson’s take on the word. I’m citing his podictionary.com entry]:

Although I don’t much follow professional sports it seems to me that sports writers have to be pretty creative writers. I mean you have to be pretty creative to keep coming up day after day with different ways of saying that this team beat that team. And now since most sports seasons cross over each other, you have to say it for football, for basketball, for hockey, soccer, cricket, tennis, lawn bowling, oh my god the list is endless.
So I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to see that Googling befuddle for news stories brings up plenty of sports stories of how team A befuddled team B.

Second in line seemed to be politicians befuddling voters.

Befuddle is such a great word. It sounds so funny all by itself. Befuddle, befuddle, befuddle. Who thought that up?

Well, as it turns out the first citation for befuddle was in the Oxford English Dictionary before it was the Oxford English Dictionary. At first it was called A New English Dictionary on Historical Principals and it was published in pieces. This particular entry must have befuddled the editors because that first citation from 1887 indicates the source as the New English Dictionary entry for the prefix be- with meaning number four.
But that’s what the etymology says too.

Oops!

My guess is that the etymology should point back to the word fuddle. There actually is a word fuddle and it showed up way back in 1588. Looking at that I see that to befuddle isn’t just to “confuse”, it’s actually to get drunk, or to confuse as if drunk because originally fuddle meant “drink.”
Although the etymology of befuddle is befuddled, the link back to fuddle is right there in the definition since the OED entry for befuddle says:
“To make stupid with tippling; also, to confuse, to stupefy. Hence befuddlement, intoxication; confusion, stupefaction.”

The etymological roots of fuddle are a little less stupefied, although not completely clear-headed either. The OED says that fuddle is of obscure origin but points out that the Dutch word vod means “soft”, “slack”, or “loose”, and that the German word fuddeln means “to swindle.” Etymonline suggests instead that this same German word means to “work in a slovenly manner; as if drunk” and that this might in turn come from fuddle meaning “worthless cloth.”