It's the Word of the Day podcast for June 22nd.

Today's word is bemuse, spelled B-E-M-U-S-E.

Bemuse is a verb.

If you are bemused by something, you are confused or bewildered by it, and often also somewhat amused.

Here's the word used. In a sentence from the Tampa Bay Times by Rick Stroud, the duck touched down on the surface of Raymond James Stadium, just minutes before the Bucks scored their own touchdown.

Many of the staff, not assigned to work on the field, were bemused by the sight of Anchor,

carrying a duck out of the stadium. They held cell phones and took pictures.

In 1735, British poet Alexander Pope lamented in rhyme, being besieged by a parson

much bemused in beer. The cleric in question was apparently one of a horde of would-be poets

who pestered Pope with requests that he read their verses. Pope meant that the parson had found his

muse, his inspiration, in beer. That use of bemused harks back to a 1705 letter in which Pope wrote of poets

irrecoverably bemused. In both letter and poem, Pope used the word bemused to allude

to being inspired by or devoted to one of the muses, the Greek sister goddesses of art, music,

and literature. The lexicographers who followed him, however, interpreted bemused in beer as meaning left confused by

beer, and their confusion gave rise to the bewilder sense of the word bemuse. The newer and very

common use of bemuse to mean to cause to have feelings of rye or tolerant amusement is a topic of some dispute.

With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sakalowski.

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