Verb

(gravell)

To apply a layer of gravel to the surface of a road, etc.

* {{quote-book, year=1905, author=John F. Hume, title=The Abolitionists, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage=We kept quietly on our way until we reached a place in the road that had been freshly graveled , and where the surface was covered with stones just suited to our use.}}

* {{quote-news, year=2006, date=May 5, author=Harold Henderson, title=Snips, work=Chicago Reader citation

, passage=The soldiers admitted that while they had the money to lay gravel on a particular road, they lacked the funds to pave it, even though all agreed that graveled roads offered easy concealment for IEDs.}}

To puzzle or annoy

* {{quote-book, year=1894, author=Anthony Hope, title=Dolly Dialogues, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage="The fracture is your making; the pin--" Here Miss Dolly interrupted; to tell the truth I was not sorry, for I was fairly graveled for the meaning of the pin.}}

* {{quote-book, year=1919, author=Christopher Darlington Morley, title=Mince Pie, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage='Oh, yes,' says Jan. Pond was graveled ; didn't know just what to do.}}

* {{quote-book, year=1922, author=Herbert Quick, title=Vandemark's Folly, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage=It graveled me like sixty to pay such a price, but I had to do it because the season was just between hay and grass.}}

To run (as a ship) upon the gravel or beach; to run aground; to cause to stick fast in gravel or sand.

* Bible, Acts xxvii. 41 (Rhemish version)

When we were fallen into a place between two seas, they gravelled the ship.

* Camden

Willam the Conqueror chanced as his arrival to be gravelled ; and one of his feet stuck so fast in the sand that he fell to the ground.

To check or stop; to embarrass; to perplex.

* Shakespeare

When you were gravelled for lack of matter.

* Sir T. North

The physician was so gravelled and amazed withal, that he had not a word more to say.

To hurt or lame (a horse) by gravel lodged between the shoe and foot.

(Webster 1913)

Verb

(muddl)

To mix together, to mix up; to confuse.

Young children tend to muddle their words.

To mash slightly for use in a cocktail.

He muddled the mint sprigs in the bottom of the glass.

To dabble in mud.

(Jonathan Swift)

To make turbid or muddy.

* L'Estrange

He did ill to muddle the water.

To think and act in a confused, aimless way.

To cloud or stupefy; to render stupid with liquor; to intoxicate partially.

* Bentley

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.

* Arbuthnot

often drunk, always muddled

To waste or misuse, as one does who is stupid or intoxicated.

* Hazlitt

They muddle it [money] away without method or object, and without having anything to show for it.