Quandry

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A predicament that creates a sense of confusion or doubt due to facing a challenging decision
2. A difficult situation in which it is hard to decide what to do next
3. A confusing circumstance that leaves one unsure about the best course of action

Etymology: The word is a misspelling of "quandary", and the spelling was not the first thing to go wrong with it. The most striking fact is that its likeliest ancestor is a Norse word for trouble. Middle English had "wandreth", meaning evil, plight, peril or adversity, which came from Old Norse "vandræði", meaning difficulty or trouble, itself built from "vándr", meaning difficult or requiring pains and care. Nobody knows for certain how "wandreth" became the sixteenth-century word we have. One proposal is that it was a dialect corruption that took on the look of a Latin-derived word ending in "-ary", a shape many English words of that period share, such as "dictionary" or "missionary". That explanation is plausible but unproven, which is why the origin is recorded as unknown.

Synonyms: predicament, dilemma, uncertainty, plight, bind