Baffle once meant to publicly disgrace a disgraced knight by hanging his image upside down — the confusion came later, along with the confusion about its own origins.
To bewilder or confuse utterly. Also a noun referring to a device used to restrain or regulate the flow of sound, light, or fluid.
Origin uncertain; possibly from Scottish English bauchle (to disgrace publicly), or from French bafouer (to ridicule, hoodwink), ultimately perhaps imitative of stammering or sputtering Key roots: bauchle (Scots English: "to disgrace, treat contemptuously").
Baffle originally meant to publicly disgrace someone — a far cry from its modern sense of bewilderment. In 16th-century Scotland, to baffle a knight was to hang his effigy upside down as a mark of infamy. The technical sense of a baffle as a sound- or fluid-regulating device emerged in the 19th century, borrowing