addled

English

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 loan translation of Latin ovum urinum, which is itself an erroneous loan translation of Ancient Greek οὔριον ᾠόν (oúrion ōión, “putrid egg”), lit. “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 adj. from c. 1600, meaning “putrid”.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /ˈæ.dəld/

Verb

addled

simple past tense and past participle of addle

Adjective

addled (comparative more addled, superlative most addled)

(of eggs) Bad, rotten; inviable, containing a dead embryo.
Confused; mixed up.
(obsolete) Morbid, corrupt, putrid, or barren. [1]

Derived terms

drug-addled

Translations

rotten (of eggs)

Dutch: rot (nl)
Greek: κλούβιος (el) (kloúvios)
Latvian: vanckars m (an egg with a half-developed dead embryo), sapuvusi f (rotten)
Russian: проту́хший (ru) (protúxšij)

References

“Webster’s Dictionary 1828 edition”, in (please provide the title of the work)‎, accessed 4 April 2011, archived from the original on 2011-04-11

Anagrams

daddle

[1] “Webster’s Dictionary 1828 edition”, in (please provide the title of the work)‎, accessed 4 April 2011, archived from the original on 2011-04-11