Verb

To thoroughly confuse, befuddle, or bewilder.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=2 , passage=I had occasion […] to make a somewhat long business trip to Chicago, and on my return […] I found Farrar awaiting me in the railway station. He smiled his wonted fraction by way of greeting, […], and finally leading me to his buggy, turned and drove out of town. I was completely mystified at such an unusual proceeding.}}

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.