To daze means to stun or confuse someone so much that they can't think clearly for a moment. When a soccer player takes a ball to the head, they might be dazed for a few seconds, standing there blinking and disoriented while the game continues around them. When you get surprising news (whether good or bad), you might feel dazed, like your brain needs a minute to catch up with reality.

Being dazed is temporary. It's that foggy feeling where sounds seem muffled and everything moves in slow motion. A loud explosion might leave witnesses dazed and stumbling. Bright lights can daze someone coming out of a dark movie theater into brilliant sunshine. The past tense “dazed” appears more often than the verb: we say someone was dazed or looked dazed.

The word can describe physical confusion (like after bumping your head) or mental overwhelm (like when your teacher announces a pop quiz on material you haven't studied). Either way, a dazed person needs a moment to recover their wits and understand what's happening around them. If someone seems dazed after an injury, they should stop what they're doing and get help.