mysterious difficult to explain or understand, and often strange or slightly frightening:
the mysterious disappearance of ships in the waters of the Bermuda Triangle What’s that mysterious noise?puzzling difficult to explain or understand:
At first this must seem a puzzling question. I found her attitude deeply puzzling.baffling impossible to understand, so that you feel very confused:
It was a baffling case. Like many people, I find theroretical physics baffling.inexplicable formal impossible to explain:
For some inexplicable reason her mind went completely blank. Some things in life are inexplicable.enigmatic formal mysterious and difficult to understand, but also often attractive or interesting – used especially about people, their expressions, or things they say:
She gave him an enigmatic smile. an enigmatic remarkcryptic formal having a meaning that is difficult to understand, and is not expressed in a clear direct way – used especially about things that people say or write:
I got a rather cryptic message from him. cryptic commentsbe a mystery if something is a mystery, you cannot understand how or why it happens:
Four years later, his death remains a complete mystery. It’s all a mystery to me.be shrouded/veiled in mystery if an event or a situation, especially one that happened a long time ago, is shrouded in mystery, it is mysterious because no one knows exactly what happened:
Stone age civilization, veiled in mystery as it is, has provided the greatest challenge to historians. [TahlilGaran] English Thesaurus ▲