addled
Meanings
Verb
- mix up or confuse
- become rotten
- "addled eggs"
- simple past and past participle of addle
Adjective Satellite
- (of eggs) no longer edible
- "an addled egg"
- confused and vague; used especially of thinking
- "your addled little brain"
Adj
- Bad, rotten; inviable, containing a dead embryo.
- Confused; mixed up.
- Morbid, corrupt, putrid, or barren.
Origin / Etymology
From Middle English addledd, adyld, equivalent to addle (“urine, liquid filth”) + -ed. Addle derives from Old English adel, adela (“mud, mire, liquid manure”), cognate with Old Swedish adel (“urine”), Middle Low German adel, Dutch aal (“manure”). Used in noun phrase addle egg (mid-13c.) “egg that does not hatch, rotten egg”, lit. “urine egg”, a calque of Latin ovum urinum, which is itself an erroneous calque of Ancient Greek οὔριον ᾠόν (oúrion ōión, “putrid egg”, literally “wind egg”), from οὔριος (oúrios, “of the wind”), from οὖρος (oûros, “fair wind”) (confused by Roman writers with οὔριος (oúrios, “of urine”), from οὖρον (oûron, “urine”)). Because of this usage, the noun in English was taken as an adjective from c. 1600, meaning “putrid”.
Synonyms
addle, befuddled, muddle, muddled, muzzy, puddle, woolly, woolly-headed, wooly, wooly-minded
Scrabble Score: 9
addled is a valid Scrabble (US) TWL wordaddled is a valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
addled is a valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary