Word Confusion: Maze versus Maize

Plural: maize

Plural for the noun: mazes
Gerund: mazing

Third person present verb: mazes
Past tense or past participle: mazed
Present participle: mazing

• Indian corn
• [US, Canada] Corn, sweet corn

A pale yellow resembling the color of corn

The grain of this plant, used for food, fodder, and as a source of oil

• Labyrinth
• A complex network of paths, streets, or passages
• A similar system represented diagrammatically as a pattern of lines
• A confusing mass of information

A state of confusion

Verb, transitive:
[Archaic; dialect; be mazed] Be dazed and confused

• [Archaic; Southern US; dialect] Amaze

[Southern US; chiefly dialect] To perplex, bewilder, or stupefy

A winding movement, as in dancing

[Medical] A path complicated by at least one blind alley and used in learning experiments and in intelligence tests

Their first crops included maize, beans, and pumpkin.

Some add rice or maize late in the process.

Genetically modified maize is being palmed off on consumers and keeping everything secret like this is contrary to consumers’ interests.

Tortillas are infinitely versatile and usually made from corn or maize, but also from wheat.

Previous work with wheat and barley is extended to include experiments with maize.

Farmers may be forced to change from barley and wheat to maize as warming continues.

They were trapped in a menacing maze of corridors.

The zoning code is a maze of petty regulations.

Trying to figure out how to fill out your taxes can be a maze of conflicting instructions.

It took Sharon two years to get comfortable with the maze of streets leading to her home.

But for months afterward, the title to the building was lost in a bureaucratic maze.

“For with the charts of all four oceans before him, Ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies, with a view to the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of his soul” (Melville).

The experiment measured the time it took for a mouse to find its way through a maze to get its reward of cheese.

The school is a maze of classrooms.

Verb, transitive:
She was still mazed with the drug she had taken.

I be fair mazed at how that old drunk got home last night.

He was regarded with suspicion, considered an outsider and a very strange young man, being called “funny” or even “mazed” by the locals.

Beyond this garden, abrupt, there was a grey stone wall overgrown with velvet moss that uprose as, gazing, Matthew stood long, all mazed and blinking, to see this place so eerie and fair.