Baffle. Now to counterwork and to defeat; but once not this so much as to mock and put to shame, and, in the technical language of chivalry, it expressed a ceremony of open scorn with which a recreant or perjured knight was visited. [See quotation from Hall, Chron. in N.E.D.]
First he his beard did shave and foully shent,
Then from him reft his shield, and it renverst,
And blotted out his armes with falshood blent,
And himselfe baffuld, and his armes unherst,
And broke his sword in twaine, and all his armour sperst.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, v. 3, 37.
He that suffers himself to be ridden, or through pusillanimity or sottishness will let every man baffle him, shall be a common laughing-stock to flout at.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part ii. § 3.
Alas, poor fool, how have they baffled thee!
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, act v. sc. 1.