muddy

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   make turbid

   muddy the water

2. 2
   adj

   Covered or splashed with, or full of, mud (“wet soil”).

   He slogged across the muddy field.

3. 3
   adj

   Of water or some other liquid: containing mud or (by extension) other sediment in suspension; cloudy, turbid.

   The previously limpid water was now muddy as a result of the struggle between the alligator and the wild boar.

4. 4
   adj

   Of or relating to mud; also, having the characteristics of mud, especially in colour or taste.

   [H]er garments, heauy vvith her drinke, / Pul'd the poore vvretch from her melodious buy^([sic – meaning lay]), / To muddy death.

5. 5
   adj

   Of an animal or plant: growing or living in mud.

   There is a point of strand / Near Vada's tower and town; and on one side / The treacherous marsh divides it from the land, / Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide, / And on the other creeps eternally, / Through muddy weeds, the shallow, sullen sea.

6. 6
   adj

   Dirty, filthy.

   There's not the ſmalleſt orbe [in the sky] vvhich thou beholdſt, / But in his motion like an Angell ſings, / Still quiring to the young eide Cherubins; / Such harmony is in immortall ſoules, / But vvhilſt this muddy veſture of decay [i.e., the human body] / Doth groſſely cloſe in it, vve cannot heare it.

7. 7
   adj

   Not clear.

   To vvhat, my loue, ſhall I compare thine eyne? / Chriſtall is muddy.

8. 8
   adj

   Originally, morally or religiously wrong; corrupt, sinful; now, morally or legally dubious; shady, sketchy.

   [B]y the vvill of God the Heavenly Principle (though it be in it ſelf inviſible and undiſcernible) in due time becomes a Spirit of ſavoury and affectionate diſcernment betvvixt the evil and the good; betvvixt the pure vvaters that flovv from the holy Spirit, and the muddy and tumultuous ſuggeſtions of the Fleſh.

Etymology

The adjective is derived from Late Middle English muddi, moddy, muddy (“covered with or full of mud, muddy”), from mud, mudde (“mud; turbid water”) + -i (suffix forming adjectives). Mud, mudde is possibly borrowed from Middle Dutch modde, and/or Middle Low German modde, mudde, from Proto-Germanic *mud-, *mudra- (“mud”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *mū-, *mew- (“moist”). The English word is analysable as mud + -y (suffix meaning ‘having the quality of’ forming adjectives). Doublet of muddle. The verb is derived from the adjective. cognates * Middle Low German moddich, muddich (German Low…