perplexity

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French perplexité or post-classical Latin perplexitas, from perplexus (“entangled”). By surface analysis, perplex + -ity.

noun

  1. The state or quality of being perplexed.
  2. Something that perplexes.
    The Emperor, who was by then a focus of unresolvable perplexities, stood providing a strongly contrary appearance. 1942, Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Canongate, published 2006, page 149
  3. (information theory) A measure of how well a probability distribution or model predicts a sample.

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