bemuse

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The Word of the Day for November 17 is:

bemuse   \bih-MYOOZ\   verb
     1 : to make confused : puzzle, bewilder
     2 : to occupy the attention of : distract, absorb
   *3 : to cause to have feelings of wry or tolerant amusement

Example sentence:
     "[The boat's captain] is too polite to comment, but he has 
noted, faintly bemused, his passenger's suede shoes." (Michael 
Kenyon, _Gourmet_, May 1990)

Did you know?
     In 1735, British poet Alexander Pope lamented, in rhyme, 
being besieged by "a parson much bemus'd in beer." The cleric in 
question was apparently one of a horde of would-be poets who 
plagued Pope with requests that he read their verses. Pope meant 
the parson had found his muse -- his inspiration -- in beer. 
That use of "bemus'd" harks back to a 1705 letter in which Pope 
wrote of "Poets . . . irrecoverably Be-mus'd." In both letter 
and poem, Pope used "bemused" to refer to being inspired by or 
devoted to one of the  Muses, the Greek sister goddesses of art, 
music, and literature. The lexicographers who followed him, 
however, interpreted "bemus'd in beer" as meaning "left confused 
by beer," and their confusion gave rise to one modern sense 
of "bemused."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.