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Muddle vs Mire - What's the difference?

muddle | mire |

As nouns the difference between muddle and mire

is that muddle is a mixture; a confusion; a garble while mire is .

As a verb muddle

is to mix together, to mix up; to confuse.

muddle

English

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.

    Derived terms

    * muddler (agent noun) * muddle along * muddle through * muddle up

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A mixture; a confusion; a garble.
    • The muddle of nervous speech he uttered did not have much meaning.

    Derived terms

    * muddle-headed

    mire

    English

    Etymology 1

    From (etyl) , whence Old English mos (English moss).

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Deep mud; moist, spongy earth.
  • * When Caliban was lazy and neglected his work, Ariel (who was invisible to all eyes but Prospero’s) would come slyly and pinch him, and sometimes tumble him down in the mire .'' (, ''Tales from Shakespeare , Hatier, coll. « Les Classiques pour tous » n° 223, p. 51)
  • An undesirable situation, a predicament.
    • Synonyms
    * (deep mud) peatland, quag
    Hypernyms
    * (deep mud) wetland
    Hyponyms
    * (deep mud) bog, fen
    Derived terms
    * mire crow * mire drum * miry * in the mire * quagmire

    Verb

    (mir)
  • To weigh down.
  • To cause or permit to become stuck in mud; to plunge or fix in mud.
    • to mire a horse or wagon
  • To soil with mud or foul matter.
  • * Shakespeare
    • Smirched thus and mired with infamy.

    Etymology 2

    Perhaps related to Middle Dutch miere (Dutch mier). Cognate with Old Norse maurr, Danish myre. All probably from (etyl)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (obsolete) An ant.

    • Anagrams

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