Bamboozle… what sort of word is that?

Bamboozle is a wonderful word, it sounds so nice, is great to say and it so perfectly defines a whole sentence worth of meaning in itself.

Bamboozle:

to cheat
to mislead
to confuse
to deceive
to get the better of by underhandedness
to hoodwink
to perplex
to mystify
to practice trickery by deception
to conceal one’s true motives especially by elaborately feigning good intentions to gain an end
to kid
to skin
to trick
to fool
to take in/ to take in by elaborate methods of deceit
to con
to stiff
to sting
to mislead
to rip off
to thwart
to deceive
to fleece
to hoax
to defraud
to dupe
to beguile
to gull
to delude
to swindle
to stitch up
to victimize
to double-cross
to diddle
to take for a ride
to do the dirty on
to bilk
to pull a fast one on
to cozen
to puzzle
to stump
to baffle
to bewilder
to confound
to befuddle
to flummox
to nonplus
to frustrate
to throw off thoroughly or completely
to beguile
to bluff
to buffalo
to burn
to catch out
to fake out
to gaff
to gammon
to gull
to have/have on
to hoax,
to hornswoggle
to humbug
to juggle
to misguide
to misinform
to mislead
to snooker
to snow
to spoof
to string along
to sucker/ suck in
to put on
to tease
to bleed
to chisel
to diddle
to euchre
to flam
to fleece
to gyp
to hustle
to mulct
to rook
to shortchange
to skin
to squeeze
to stick
to sting
to swindle

I have searched and searched, but nowhere can I find the origin of the word, except that it was first noted in the eighteenth century. Looking at the enormous list of definitions, above, it is no wonder at all that people leaning English get stumped/perplexed/baffled/confused… etc, etc!!

Thanks to:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bamboozle

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bamboozle

http://www.answers.com/topic/bamboozle

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