addle
Part of speech: adj
verb
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: From Middle English adel (“rotten”), from Old English adel, adela (“mire, pool, liquid excrement”), from Proto-West Germanic *adal, from Proto-Germanic *adalaz, *adalô (“cattle urine, liquid manure”).
Akin to Scots adill, North Frisian ethel (“urine”), Saterland Frisian adel (“dung”), Middle Low German adele (“mud, liquid manure”) (Dutch aal (“liquid manure”)), Old Swedish adel (“urine”), Danish ajle (“liquid manure”), Bavarian Adel (“liquid manure”).
Inflected forms:
form: more addle
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most addle
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: addles
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: addling
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: addled
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: addled
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: Having lost the power of development, and become rotten; putrid.
pos: adj
examples: addle eggs
Pan. Troilus! Why, he esteems her no more than I esteem an addle egg.
Cres. If you love an addle egg as well as you love an idle head, you would eat chickens i' the shell.
It was a feathered riddle; a mystery hatched out of an egg, and just as mysterious as if the egg had been addle!
gloss: Unfruitful or confused; muddled.
pos: adj
tags: broadly
examples: addle brains
Thus far the Poet, but his brains grow Addle; / And all the reſt is purely from this Noddle.
She stretched out a great red hand and arm on each side of her, so as to bar the doorway, and slowly nodded her addle head at me.
gloss: To make or become addled; to muddle or confuse.
pos: verb
examples: to addle someone's brain
The same female bard—descended, possibly, from those terrible old Scalds who seem to have existed for the express purpose of addling the brains of mankind when they begin to investigate languages—made a standing pretence which greatly assisted in forcing me back to a number of hideous places that I would by all means have avoided.
We still had a big pay-day coming to us, and for thirty-seven days, without a drink to addle our mental processes, we incessantly planned the spending of our money.
“Oh, leave that silly old book alone. It can’t be good for you always reading. You’ll addle your brain, that’s what you’ll do, Philip.”
[Niccolò] Machiavelli had received an early lesson in the value of addling men's brains. […] [A] talent for addling men's brains is part of the armoury of any successful prince […].
Has Peppa Pig addled my brain – or is it a critique on capitalism? [title]
Words can addle, the propagandist knows, even in their absence.
gloss: To cause fertilised eggs to lose viability, by killing the developing embryo within through shaking, piercing, freezing or oiling, without breaking the shell.
pos: verb
examples: Their eggs were addled.
The term shocking or addling trout and salmon eggs is applied to the process of turning the infertile eggs white so they can be separated from the fertile ones. Actually, this amounts to nothing more than agitating the eggs enough to rupture the yolk membrane in the infertile eggs, which causes them to turn white.
Synonyms: addled
Derived words: addle-brain
addlebrained
addlehead
addleheaded
addlement
addleness
addle pate
addlepated
addle-plot
addlings
drug-addled
Translations: