Dictionary

mystification en · NOUN

Etymology

From French mystification.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) The act of mystifying or the condition of being mystified.
   • But soon one notices, first in ones and twos, and then in larger groups, men who are very much alive at this hour in the morning, the sorters for the Caledonian, and Edinburgh sections of the "Down Special"; mail is piled high on the platforms, and the postal men glance occasionally towards the platform intermediate signals. By this time the calling-on arm is pulled off, and a few minutes later in comes the train, unannounced by the loud-speakers, to the mystification of many travellers. 1948 May and June, O. S. Nock, “Scottish Night Mails of the L.M.S.R.—3”, in Railway Magazine, page 157:
   • For a structuralist like Edmund Leach, the structure is the meaning. Genesis, for example, is about incest taboos; all the rest is noise and mystification. 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light:Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, page 12:
2. (countable, uncountable) A mystifying thing.

Forms

Deriveds

demystification

Synonyms

obfuscation · bafflement · bewilderment

Translations (5)

fi mystifikaatio (act of being mystified) · de Verblüffung (act of being mystified) · fi hämmentyminen (act of being mystified) · fi kummastuminen (act of being mystified) · ru мистифика́ция (act of being mystified)