to behave, proceed, or think in a confused or aimless fashion or with an air of improvisation: Some people just muddle along, waiting for their big break.
00:10
Muddledis always a great word to know.
So is quincunx. Does it mean:
So is bezoar. Does it mean:
So is lollapalooza. Does it mean:
a stew of meat, vegetables, potatoes, etc.
an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.
a scrap or morsel of food left at a meal.
a calculus or concretion found in the stomach or intestines of certain animals, esp. ruminants, formerly reputed to be an effective remedy for poison.
an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance.
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
the state or condition of being muddled, especially a confused mental state.
9.
a confused, disordered, or embarrassing condition; mess.
Verb phrases
10.
muddle through, to achieve a certain degree of success but without much skill, polish, experience, or direction: None of us knew much about staging a variety show, so we just had to muddle through.
Origin: 1540–50;mud + -le; cognate with Middle Dutchmoddelen to muddy
Related forms
mud·dled·ness, mud·dle·ment, noun
mud·dling·ly, adverb
pre·mud·dle, noun, verb (used with object), pre·mud·dled, pre·mud·dling.
1590s, perhaps frequentative of mud (q.v.), or from Du. moddelen "to make (water) muddy," from the same P.Gmc. source. Sense of "make confused" first recorded 1680s. Related: Muddled; muddling.
mod. alcohol intoxicated. : I've had a little too much muddler, I think. Anyway, I'm muddled.
Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition. Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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Example sentences
The symptoms of this decline are clear, from losing track of house keys to getting easily muddled and confused.
The portraits of his friends are fervent, magnificently muddled, hyperbolic and ambivalent.
At this point in time the evidence is too muddled to make a final conclusion either way.
Subsequent diffusion over seven millennia has necessarily muddled the picture without requiring major migrations.
Mostly, however, the reform deals with the symptoms of muddled incentives: high premiums and poor access.
Her first task was to amend the overly verbose and much-muddled complaint.
Nevertheless, the message may be already getting muddled.
But the data were too muddled for clear conclusions.
Later, he muddled a few baseball jokes as well, and at one point he squinted and admitted he couldn't read his own slides.
Instead they have muddled along, wandering down many a dead end in the process.