addled
/ˈæ.dəld/ adjective
Also a form of addle
- adjective (of eggs) Bad, rotten; inviable, containing a dead embryo.
- adjective (figurative, of persons or their thoughts) Confused; mixed up. “coke-addled”
- adjective (obsolete) Morbid, corrupt, putrid, or barren.
Synonyms
addleheaded addlebrained addlepated muddled muddied muddle-headed addle befuddled muzzy woolly wooly woolly-headed wooly-minded
Etymology
From Middle English addled, 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”.
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “addled”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details