different between murky vs befogged

English

Alternative forms

• mirky

Etymology

From Middle English mirky; equivalent to murk +? -y. Related to Old Norse myrkr, Russian ???? (mrak), Serbo-Croatian ?????.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?m??(?)ki/
• Rhymes: -??(?)ki

Adjective

murky (comparative murkier, superlative murkiest)

1. Hard to see through, as a fog or mist.
2. Dark, dim, gloomy.
3. Cloudy, indistinct, obscure.
4. Dishonest, shady.

Synonyms

• dark

Related terms

• murk
• murkily
• murkiness

Translations

Further reading

• murky in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• murky in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

English

Adjective

befogged (comparative more befogged, superlative most befogged)

1. Obscured with fog or smoke; murky.
   • 1614, John Taylor, “Plutoes Proclamation concerning his Infernall pleasure for the Propagation of Tobacco” in The Nipping and Snipping of Abuses, London: Nathaniel Butter, ^[1]

     […] euery one a Furies shape assumes,

     Befog’d and clouded with my hel-hatch’d fumes.

   • 1892, Henry James, “Sir Dominick Ferrand” in The Real Thing and Other Tales, New York: Macmillan, 1893, p. 46,^[2]

     Peter Baron, as he sat in his corner while the train stopped, considered, in the befogged gaslight, the bookstall standard of literature and asked himself whose character had fallen to pieces now.

2. (nautical) Caught in fog.
   • 1635, Luke Foxe, North-west Fox, London: Thomas Fawcet, p. 171,^[3]

     […] this morning he was close aboard the N. Coast, it seemeth high ragged land and full of guts, he was becalmed and befogged, and stood S. wards into the channell […]

   • 1912, Theodore Goodridge Roberts, Blessington’s Folly, London: John Long, Chapter 20, p. 306,^[4]

     The fact is, he knew every rock, the set of every current at every season of the year, and in his younger days had often gone to the assistance of befogged vessels and piloted them safely into harbour or clear of the coast.

3. Confused, muddled.
   • 1607, Arthur Dent, The Plaine Mans Path-way to Heauen, London: Edward Bishop, p. 254,^[5]

     […] you speake you wot not what, you are altogether befogd and benighted in this question.

   • 1894, Ivan Dexter, Talmud: A Strange Narrative of Central Australia, published in serial form in Port Adelaide News and Lefevre's Peninsula Advertiser (SA), Chapter XXIX,^[6]

     If I could only get back to the inscription or the grotto I felt the rest would be easy to accomplish, but the more I rambled the more utterly befogged I got.

Translations

Verb

befogged

1. simple past tense and past participle of befog