head-scratching
2
7.5
- adjective
- /ˈhɛdˌskrætʃɪŋ/
- Informal
:
confuso
- An Iowa football team that has already lost four games in a row—and this doesn't even include what continues to be a head-scratching defeat at home against Central Michigan—faces its toughest assignment of the season.
- a lot of head-scratching
- much head-scratching
- head-scratching decisions
So there's a whole kind of range from from, yeah, harmful to just annoying and head scratching if you're an expert.
- So there's a whole kind of range from from, yeah, harmful to just annoying and head scratching if you're an expert.
Examples
-
I mean I 'get' US exceptionalism, but this is one of the most head-scratching issues to outsiders that exists.
Blog text (1) -
As political prognostication, it was a head-scratching moment.
Blog text (4) -
Bob and "The American Soldier" get right to the heart of this head-scratching turn of events.
Blog text (21) -
The list of twenty questions was carefully chosen after much head-scratching.
Fiction book (1994) -
In the midst of that head-scratching, many people are wondering, where were the regulators?
Blog text (20) -
This new DES is causing a lot of head-scratching within GP practices.
Academic text (2014) -
When one thinks of the words "steampunk" and "multicultural," there's a moment of head-scratching.
Blog text (22) -
But after three years of tracing flows in mounds and nests, taking apart several mounds to work out their architecture, and doing a lot of head-scratching, I finally came to a pretty good understanding of how a mound operates.
Academic text (2002) -
The sudden change in the company's policy was so head-scratching that employees didn't know how to react.
-
The professor's explanation of quantum physics left the students feeling head-scratching, as they struggled to grasp the complex concepts.
Synonyms
276
3.2
Hard to understand and makes people feel unsure
27
6.4
Hard to understand and causing confusion
16
6.7
Making people feel confused because it is hard to understand
8
6.0
Making someone feel confused and unable to find their way
7
5.4
Confused and not in clear order so hard to understand
1
7.7
Making people confused and things hard to understand
Very hard to understand because it is complicated
Difficult to understand and making people wonder
Making something hard to understand or follow
Antonyms
How Puzzling
46
8.8
27
6.4
42
4.6
- Informal
2
7.5
276
3.2
207
3.9
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Head-scratching comes from the picture of someone scratching their head when they do not understand something, with the word scratch showing that little puzzled action. So, something head-scratching is 'puzzling' or 'hard to understand'.