Agitate vs Muddle - What's the difference?
agitate | muddle |
To move with a violent, irregular action; as, the wind agitates the sea; to agitate water in a vessel.
(rare) To move or actuate.
:(Thomson)
To stir up; to disturb or excite; to perturb; as, he was greatly agitated.
To discuss with great earnestness; to debate; as, a controversy hotly agitated.
:(Boyle)
To revolve in the mind, or view in all its aspects; to contrive busily; to devise; to plot; as, politicians agitate desperate designs.
To mix together, to mix up; to confuse.
To mash slightly for use in a cocktail.
To dabble in mud.
To make turbid or muddy.
* L'Estrange
To think and act in a confused, aimless way.
To cloud or stupefy; to render stupid with liquor; to intoxicate partially.
* Bentley
* Arbuthnot
To waste or misuse, as one does who is stupid or intoxicated.
* Hazlitt
A mixture; a confusion; a garble.
As verbs the difference between agitate and muddle
is that agitate is to move with a violent, irregular action; as, the wind agitates the sea; to agitate water in a vessel while muddle is to mix together, to mix up; to confuse.As a noun muddle is
a mixture; a confusion; a garble.agitate
English
(Webster 1913)Verb
(agitat)- ``Winds . . . agitate the air.'' --Cowper.
- The mind of man is agitated by various passions. --Johnson.
Synonyms
* move, shake, excite, rouse, disturb, distract, revolve, discuss, debate, canvassExternal links
* * * ----muddle
English
Verb
(muddl)- Young children tend to muddle their words.
- He muddled the mint sprigs in the bottom of the glass.
- (Jonathan Swift)
- He did ill to muddle the water.
- Their old master Epicurus seems to have had his brains so muddled and confounded with them, that he scarce ever kept in the right way.
- often drunk, always muddled
- They muddle it [money] away without method or object, and without having anything to show for it.
Derived terms
* muddler (agent noun) * muddle along * muddle through * muddle upNoun
(en noun)- The muddle of nervous speech he uttered did not have much meaning.