dazzle

verb

1. 1

   To confuse or overpower the sight of (someone or something, such as a sensor) by means of excessive brightness.

   Dazzled by the headlights of the lorry, the deer stopped in the middle of the street.

   Antidrone lasers can burn or dazzle a drone's sensors.

   Those heavenly shapes / Will dazzle now the earthly, with their blaze / Insufferably bright.

   An unreflected light did never yet / Dazzle the vision feminine.

2. 2

   figurativeTo render incapable of thinking clearly; to overwhelm with showiness or brilliance.

   The delegates were dazzled by the originality of his arguments.

3. 3

   To be overpowered by light; to be confused by excess of brightness.

   For we see, that an over-light maketh the Eyes dazel, insomuch as perpetual looking against the Sun, would cause blindness.

   […] I dare not trust these Eyes; / They Dance in Mists, and dazle with surprize.

noun

1. 1

   A light of dazzling brilliancy.

2. 2

   figurativeShowy brilliance that may stop a person from thinking clearly.

3. 3

   A herd of zebra.

   We were trying to stalk a dazzle of zebra which flashed in and out of a long strip of green and yellow fever trees, with an ostrich, its feathers flared like a ballet skirt around its dancing legs, on their flank, when suddenly […]

   Zebras move in herds which are known as "dazzles." When a lion approaches a dazzle of zebras during its hunt, […]

   I reached the lodge as a dazzle of zebras trotted across the dirt road into thorny scrub by the game fence, and a lone kudu gazed up at me from the short grass near the swimming pool.

   A group of zebras can be called a dazzle.

4. 4

   Dazzle camouflage.

Forms

plural

dazzles

past tense

dazzled

past participle

dazzled

present participle

dazzling

third person singular

dazzles