Challenge: Addle

Nov 02, 2008 23:29

addle \AD-'l\, verb:
1. to make or become muddled or confused
2. to make or become rotten or putrid

by 1712, from addle (n.) "urine, liquid filth," from Old English adela "mud, mire, liquid manure" (cognate with Old Swedish adel "urine," Middle Low German adel, Dutch aal "puddle"). Used in noun phrase addle egg (c.1250) "egg that does not hatch, rotten egg," literally "urine egg," a loan translation of Latin ovum urinum, which is itself an erroneous loan translation of Greek ourion oon "putrid egg," literally "wind egg," from ourios "of the wind" (confused by Roman writers with ourios "of urine," from ouron "urine"). Because of this usage, the noun in English was taken as an adjective from c. 1600, meaning "putrid," and thence given a figurative extension to "empty, vain, idle," also "confused, muddled, unsound" (1706). The verb followed.
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