''addle'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260708194133-00-⌔

addle - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

addle (comparative more addle, superlative most addle)

• Having lost the power of development, and become rotten; putrid.
  • ✤ * addle eggs*
  • ✤ Pan. Troilus! Why, he esteems her no more than I esteem an addle egg.
    Cres. If you love an addle egg as well as you love an idle head, you would eat chickens i’ the shell.¹
  • ✤ It was a feathered riddle; a mystery hatched out of an egg, and just as mysterious as if the egg had been addle!²
• (by extension) Unfruitful or confused; muddled.
  • ✤ * addle brains*
  • ✤ Thus far the Poet, but his brains grow Addle;/And all the reſt is purely from this Noddle.³
  • ✤ She stretched out a great red hand and arm on each side of her, so as to bar the doorway, and slowly nodded her addle head at me.⁴

Noun

addle (plural addles)

• (obsolete) Liquid filth; mire.

Verb

addle (third-person singular simple present addles, present participle addling, simple past and past participle addled)

• To make or become addled; to muddle or confuse.
  • ✤ to addle someone’s brain
  • ✤ The same female bard—descended, possibly, from those terrible old Scalds who seem to have existed for the express purpose of addling the brains of mankind when they begin to investigate languages—made a standing pretence which greatly assisted in forcing me back to a number of hideous places that I would by all means have avoided.⁵
  • ✤ We still had a big pay-day coming to us, and for thirty-seven days, without a drink to addle our mental processes, we incessantly planned the spending of our money.⁶
  • ✤ “Oh, leave that silly old book alone. It can’t be good for you always reading. You’ll addle your brain, that’s what you’ll do, Philip.”⁷
  • ✤ [Niccolò] Machiavelli had received an early lesson in the value of addling men’s brains. […] [A] talent for addling men’s brains is part of the armoury of any successful prince […].⁸
  • ✤ Has Peppa Pig addled my brain – or is it a critique on capitalism? [title]⁹
  • ✤ Words can addle, the propagandist knows, even in their absence.¹⁰
• To cause fertilised eggs to lose viability, by killing the developing embryo within through shaking, piercing, freezing or oiling, without breaking the shell.
  • ✤ Their eggs were addled.¹¹
  • ✤ The term shocking or addling trout and salmon eggs is applied to the process of turning the infertile eggs white so they can be separated from the fertile ones. Actually, this amounts to nothing more than agitating the eggs enough to rupture the yolk membrane in the infertile eggs, which causes them to turn white.¹²

Noun

addle (plural addles)

• An unwise or intellectually impaired person.

Verb

addle (third-person singular simple present addles, present participle addling, simple past and past participle addled)

• (provincial, Northern England) To earn, earn by labor; earn money or one’s living.
  • ✤ A DDLINGS, wages. “Poor addlings,” small pay for work. “Hard addlings,” money laboriously acquired. “Saving’s good addling,” as the well known saying, “a penny saved is a penny gained.”¹³
  • ✤ * *ADDLE . To earn. “It’s weel- addled” – well-earned. “Addle nowt an’ ware at t’ end on ‘t, an’ tha’ll soin ha’ to leuk raand t’ corners.” – Earn nothing and spend hard, and you’ll soon come to poverty.¹⁴
• (provincial, Northern England) To thrive or grow; to ripen.
  • ✤ Kill ivy, or else tree will addle no more.¹⁵

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈæ.dəl/
• Audio (US): 🔊
• Audio (General American): 🔊
• Rhymes: -ædəl

Etymology 1

From Middle English adel (“rotten”), from Old English adel, adela (“mire, pool, liquid excrement”), from Proto-West Germanic ﹡adal, from Proto-Germanic ﹡adalaz, ﹡adalô (“cattle urine, liquid manure”).

Akin to Scots adill, North Frisian ethel (“urine”), Saterland Frisian adel (“dung”), Middle Low German adele (“mud, liquid manure”) (Dutch aal (“liquid manure”)), Old Swedish adel (“urine”), Danish ajle (“liquid manure”), Bavarian Adel (“liquid manure”).

Etymology 2

Inherited from Middle English addlen, adlen, probably from Old Norse ǫðlask (“to gain possession of property”), from ōðal (“owndom, property”).

Printed 2026-07-08.

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Footnotes

1. c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]: ↩

2. 1851 April 9, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC: ↩

3. 1690, [John] Dryden, “Prologue to Don Sebastian King of Portugal. […]”, in Don Sebastian, King of Portugal: […], London: […] Jo. Hindmarsh, […], →OCLC,, page 20: ↩

4. 1859 November 26 – 1860 August 25, [William] Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White. […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], published 1860, →OCLC: ↩

5. 1860 January 28 – October 13, Charles Dickens, chapter XV, in The Uncommercial Traveller, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1861, →OCLC: ↩

6. 1913 August, Jack London, John Barleycorn, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC: ↩

7. 1915, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC: ↩

8. 2000, Quentin Skinner, “The Adviser to Princes”, in Nigel Warburton, Jon Pike, Derek Matravers, editors, Reading Political Philosophy: Machiavelli to Mill, Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge in association with The Open University, →ISBN, page 30: ↩

9. 2020 March 8, Séamas O’Reilly, “Has Peppa Pig addled my brain – or is it a critique on capitalism?”, in The Guardian ‎${}^{[1]}$, →ISSN: ↩

10. 2025 February 27, Megan Garber, “Control. Alt. Delete.”, in The Atlantic ‎${}^{[2]}$: ↩

11. 1782, William Cowper, Pairing Time Anticipated: ↩

12. 1980, Earl Leitritz with Robert C[onklin] Lewis, Trout and Salmon Culture (Hatchery Methods) [California Fish Bulletin; 164], Oakland, Calif.: University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, →ISBN, page 61: ↩

13. 1855, “An inhabitant” [pseudonym; Francis Kildale Robinson], A Glossary of Yorkshire Words and Phrases, Collected in Whitby and the Neighbourhood. With Examples of their Colloquial Use, and Allusions to Local Customs and Traditions, London: John Russell Smith, 36, Soho Square, →OCLC, page 2: ↩

14. 1862, anonymous [C. Clough Robinson], The Dialect of Leeds and Its Neighbourhood, London: John Russell Smith, page 233: ↩

15. 1557 February 13 (Gregorian calendar), Thomas Tusser, A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie, London: […] Richard Tottel, →OCLC; republished London: […] Robert Triphook, […], and William Sancho, […], 1810, →OCLC: ↩