muddily

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Related to muddily: muddied, muddy up

mud·dy

(mŭd′ē)

adj. mud·di·er, mud·di·est

1. Full of or covered with mud.

a. Not bright or pure: a muddy color.

b. Not clear; cloudy, as with sediment: muddy coffee.

3. Lacking luster; dull: a muddy complexion.

4. Confused or vague: muddy thinking.

tr.v. mud·died, mud·dy·ing, mud·dies

1. To make dirty or muddy.

2. To make dull or cloudy.

3. To make obscure or confused.

mud′di·ly adv.

mud′di·ness n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Mentioned in ?

muddy

References in classic literature ?

When the heart is anguished with unutterable emotion, it speaks in accents that deaden all the nerves, and thrill the ears." Tom was getting to be animated, and when that was the case, his ideas flowed like a torrent after a thunder-shower, or in volumes, and a little muddily. "What do I mean, indeed; I mean to have YOU," he THOUGHT, "and at least, eighty thousand dollars, or dictionaries, Webster's inclusive, were made in vain."

View in context

The semblance of an inn is attempted to be given to this wretched place by fragments of conventional red curtaining in the windows, which rags are made muddily transparent in the night-season by feeble lights of rush or cotton dip burning dully in the close air of the inside.

View in context

But Merdle, as usual, oozed sluggishly and muddily about his drawing-room, saying never a word.

View in context

(24) Some authority even muddily proclaims that "[a] person having an insane delusion is incompetent to make a will," erroneously collapsing insane delusions into considerations of capacity.