Word.ws English Dictionary

addle

/ˈæ.dəl/

addle adjective: having lost the power of development, and become rotten; putrid.

Adjective

addle (comparative more addle, superlative most addle)

  1. 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.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...
  2. (broadly) Unfruitful or confused; muddled.
    • addle brains
    • Thus far the Poet, but his brains grow Addle; / And all the reſt is purely from this Noddle.1690, [John] Dryden, “Prologue to Don Sebastian King of Portugal. […]”, in Don Sebastian, King of Portugal: […], London: […] Jo. Hindmarsh, […], →OCLC, (please specify |act=I or II), page 20

Noun (1)

addle (plural addles)

  1. (obsolete) Liquid filth; mire.

Verb (1)

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

  1. 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...1860 January 28 – October 13, Charles Dickens, chapter XV, in The Uncommercial Traveller, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1861, →OCLC
  2. 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.1782, William Cowper, Pairing Time Anticipated
    • 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...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...

Noun (2)

addle (plural addles)

  1. An unwise or intellectually impaired person.

Verb (2)

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

  1. (Northern England, provincial) To earn, earn by labor; earn money or one's living.
    • ADDLINGS, 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."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...
    • 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.1862, anonymous [C. Clough Robinson], The Dialect of Leeds and Its Neighbourhood, London: John Russell Smith, page 233
  2. (Northern England, provincial) To thrive or grow; to ripen.
    • Kill ivy, or else tree will addle no more.1557 February 13 (Gregorian calendar), Thomas Tusser, A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie, London: […] Richard Tottel, →OCLC; republished London: […] Robert Triphook, […], and William Sancho, […]...

addle meaning in Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada

addle in Urdu

بنجر, گدلا, خالی

addle in Malayalam

ചിന്താക്കുഴപ്പമുണ്ടാക്കുക, കേടാകുക, നിഷ്ഫലമാകുക, ചീഞ്ഞതാകുക

addle in Kannada

ಕೊಳೆಯಿಸು, ಕೆಡಿಸು

Examples of addle in a sentence

  • It was a feathered riddle; a mystery hatched out of an egg, and just as mysterious as if the egg had been addle!1851 April 9, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC:
  • 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.1859 November 26 – 1860 August 25, [William] Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White. […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], published...
  • 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.1913 August, Jack London, John Barleycorn, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC:
  • You’ll addle your brain, that’s what you’ll do, Philip.”1915, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC:

Synonyms of addle

Forms of addle

Adjective
comparativemore addle
superlativemost addle
Noun
pluraladdles
Verb
third-person singular presentaddles
present participleaddling
past participleaddled
pastaddled

Origin of addle

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”).

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

Words formed from addle

Phrases with addle

Words that rhyme with addle

Questions about addle

What does addle mean?
Addle means having lost the power of development, and become rotten; putrid.
What is addle in Urdu?
Addle in Urdu is بنجر, گدلا, خالی. See Addle meaning in Urdu.
How do you use addle in a sentence?
It was a feathered riddle; a mystery hatched out of an egg, and just as mysterious as if the egg had been addle!
What part of speech is addle?
Addle can be an adjective, a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce addle?
Addle is pronounced /ˈæ.dəl/.

Words near addle in the dictionary

  1. additivity
  2. additory
  3. additur
  4. additurs
  5. ADDL
  6. addle
  7. addle pate
  8. addle pates
  9. addle-brain
  10. addle-brained
  11. addle-brains

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: addle (page history and authors); addle (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); addle (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); addle (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-addle.ogg.

Cite this entry: “addle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/addle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.