bamboozle: [18] Bamboozle is a mystery word. It first appears in 1703, in the writings of the dramatist Colly Cibber, and seven years later it was one of a list of the latest buzzwords cited by Jonathan Swift in the Tatler (others included bully, mob, and sham). It is probably a ‘cant’ term (a sort of low-life argot), and may perhaps be of Scottish origin; there was a 17th-century Scottish verb bombaze ‘perplex’, which may be the same word as bombace, literally ‘padding, stuffing’, but metaphorically ‘inflated language’ (the variant form bombast has survived into modern English). => bombast
bamboozle (v.)
1703, originally a slang or cant word, perhaps Scottish from bombaze "perplex," related to bombast, or French embabouiner "to make a fool (literally 'baboon') of." Related: Bamboozled; bamboozling. As a noun from 1703.
