Verb

(en verb)

To utter words, especially complaints or angry expressions, indistinctly or with a low voice and lips partly closed; to say under one's breath.

You could hear the students mutter as they were served sodden spaghetti, yet again, in the cafeteria.

The beggar muttered words of thanks, as passersby dropped coins in his cup.

* {{quote-news

, year=2012 , date=June 28 , author=Jamie Jackson , title=Wimbledon 2012: Lukas Rosol shocked by miracle win over Rafael Nadal , work=the Guardian citation , page= , passage=This set – the set of Rosol's life – was studded with aces and menacing ground-strokes that left Nadal an impotent spectator often muttering to himself and at the umpire regarding a perceived misdemeanour by his opponent.}}

To speak softly and incoherently, or with imperfect articulations.

The asylum inmate muttered some doggerel about chains and pains to himself, over and over.

* Dryden

Meantime your filthy foreigner will stare, / And mutter to himself.

To make a sound with a low, rumbling noise.

April could hear the delivery van's engine muttering in the driveway.

* Alexander Pope

Thick lightnings flash, the muttering thunder rolls.

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.