Addle

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ˈæ.dəl/

Definitions

1. To become mentally unclear or confused; to make someone or something confused or muddled
2. When a person's mind becomes disordered or clouded; to cause confusion or disorder in another's thoughts
3. To experience mental fuzziness or bewilderment; to create confusion or make unclear in others

Etymology: The surprising part is that "addle" once meant something filthy. Its Old English ancestor "adel" referred to mire, pools and liquid manure, and it was used for rotten things, so a "addled" egg was originally one that had gone bad. Across the Germanic languages, close relatives of this word still mean urine or liquid dung, which suggests a shared root for wet filth. The verb has a different and rather surprising origin. In Middle English, "addlen" meant to earn or acquire, to gain possession of property. Scholars believe it came from Old Norse "ǫðlask", "to gain possession of property", from "ōðal", meaning ownership or property. That sense of gaining or getting faded, and the verb came to mean to muddle or confuse, which was also the meaning that the "rotten" adjective had taken on. The two strands of meaning merged, so the modern sense of a muddled mind carries traces of both a spoiled egg and a lost fortune.

Synonyms: confuse, bewilder

Antonyms: clarify, enlighten