different between muddle vs crowd

English

Etymology

From Middle Dutch moddelen (“to make muddy”), from modde, mod (“mud”) (Modern Dutch modder). Compare German Kuddelmuddel.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?m?d?l/
• Rhymes: -?d?l

Verb

muddle (third-person singular simple present muddles, present participle muddling, simple past and past participle muddled)

1. To mix together, to mix up; to confuse.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of F. W. Newman to this entry?)

2. To mash slightly for use in a cocktail.

3. To dabble in mud.
   • c. 1721-1722, Jonathan Swift, The Progress of Marriage

     Young ducklings foster'd by a hen;
     But, when let out, they run and muddle

4. To make turbid or muddy.
5. To think and act in a confused, aimless way.
6. To cloud or stupefy; to render stupid with liquor; to intoxicate partially.
   • 1692, Richard Bentley, A Confutation of Atheism

     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.

   • 1712, John Arbuthnot, The History of John Bull

     often drunk, always muddled

7. To waste or misuse, as one does who is stupid or intoxicated.
   • 1821, William Hazlitt, On the Want of Money

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

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

muddle (plural muddles)

1. A mixture; a confusion; a garble.

2. (cooking and cocktails) A mixture of crushed ingredients, as prepared with a muddler.

Translations

Derived terms

• muddle-headed

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k?a?d/
• Rhymes: -a?d

Etymology 1

From Middle English crouden, from Old English cr?dan, from Proto-Germanic *kr?dan?, *kreudan?. Cognate with Dutch kruien.

Verb

crowd (third-person singular simple present crowds, present participle crowding, simple past and past participle crowded)

1. (intransitive) To press forward; to advance by pushing.

2. (intransitive) To press together or collect in numbers

   Synonyms: swarm, throng, crowd in

   • Images came crowding on his mind faster than he could put them into words.

3. (transitive) To press or drive together, especially into a small space; to cram.
4. (transitive) To fill by pressing or thronging together
   • 1875, William Hickling Prescott, History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain

     The balconies and verandas were crowded with spectators, anxious to behold their future sovereign.

5. (transitive, often used with "out of" or "off") To push, to press, to shove.
6. (nautical) To approach another ship too closely when it has right of way.
7. (nautical, of a square-rigged ship, transitive) To carry excessive sail in the hope of moving faster.
8. (transitive) To press by solicitation; to urge; to dun; hence, to treat discourteously or unreasonably.

Synonyms

• becrowd (dated)

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

crowd (plural crowds)

1. A group of people congregated or collected into a close body without order.
2. Several things collected or closely pressed together; also, some things adjacent to each other.

3. (with definite article) The so-called lower orders of people; the populace, vulgar.
4. A group of people united or at least characterised by a common interest.

Synonyms

• (group of things): aggregation, cluster, group, mass
• (group of people): audience, group, multitude, public, swarm, throng
• (the "lower orders" of people): everyone, general public, masses, rabble, mob, unwashed

Derived terms

Translations

Etymology 2

Inherited from Middle English crowde, from Welsh crwth or a Celtic cognate.

Noun

crowd (plural crowds)

1. (obsolete) Alternative form of crwth
   • 1600, Ben Jonson, Cynthia's Revels

     A lackey that […] can warble upon a crowd a little.

2. (now dialectal) A fiddle.

Derived terms

• crowder

Verb

crowd (third-person singular simple present crowds, present participle crowding, simple past and past participle crowded)

1. (obsolete, intransitive) To play on a crowd; to fiddle.
   • 1656, Thomas Middleton, William Rowley, and Philip Massinger, The Old Law

     Fiddlers, crowd on, crowd on.

References

crowd in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Anagrams

• c-word