Bewilder literally means to cast someone into the wilderness — confusion as being lost in a trackless wild, one of English's most vivid spatial metaphors for mental disorientation.
To cause someone to become perplexed or confused. To disorient or puzzle completely.
From be- (intensive prefix) + wilder (to lead astray, to lose one's way), from wilderness or wild, meaning literally to lose someone in the wild Key roots: wilde (Old English: "wild, untamed, uncultivated"), *wilþijaz (Proto-Germanic: "wild, untamed").
Bewilder literally means "to be-wild someone" — to make them feel as though they've been cast into a wilderness with no landmarks or sense of direction. The verb 'wilder' (to lead astray, now obsolete) was still in use when 'bewilder' was coined in the 1680s. The metaphor of confusion as spatial disorientation is deeply embedded in English: we say we're "lost," "disoriented," "all at sea," or "can't find our bearings