Baffle

1. (v. t.) To cause to undergo a disgraceful punishment, as a recreant knight.
2. (v. t.) To check by shifts and turns; to elude; to foil.
3. (v. t.) To check by perplexing; to disconcert, frustrate, or defeat; to thwart.
4. (v. i.) To practice deceit.
5. (v. i.) To struggle against in vain; as, a ship baffles with the winds.
6. (n.) A defeat by artifice, shifts, and turns; discomfiture.
7. (n.) A deflector, as a plate or wall, so arranged across a furnace or boiler flue as to mingle the hot gases and deflect them against the substance to be heated.
8. (n.) A grating or plate across a channel or pipe conveying water, gas, or the like, by which the flow is rendered more uniform in different parts of the cross section of the stream; -- used in measuring the rate of flow, as by means of a weir.
9. (n.) A lever for operating the throttle valve of a winding engine.