addled

1. participlepastsimple past and past participle of addle

comparative more addled · superlative most addled

1. Bad, rotten; inviable, containing a dead embryo.

   I haven’t a bit o’ patience with you—sitting on an addled egg for ever, as if there was never a fresh un in the world.

   1861, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter XI, in Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC

   2 more examples

   He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been—in that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they had not been whistled away—by the fervour of this reproach.

   1854, Charles Dickens, “Very ridiculous”, in Hard Times. For These Times, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], →OCLC, 3rd book (Garnering), page 275

   We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice-peg, / We have learned to bottle our parents twain in the yelk of an addled egg,

   1892, Rudyard Kipling, “The Conundrum of the Workshops”, in Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses, 3rd edition, London: Methuen & Co. […], →OCLC, page 168

2. figurativelyConfused; mixed up.

   coke-addled

   5 more examples

   crack-addled

   But she counted and counted till she got that addled she’d start to count in the basket for a spoon sometimes; […].

   1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXXVII, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC, page 381

   […] my addled brain required as much sleep as an infant.

   2011, Philip A. G. Kelly, My Odyssey, page 90

   A long combat career exposed to weapons blasts had left him struggling with depression and anger, a frayed memory and addled concentration.

   2024 December 16, Dave Philipps, Mark Abramson, “Seeking Relief From Brain Injury, Some Veterans Turn to Psychedelics”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   They told me it was because they knew the Hur report was about to drop. And they knew it would have all this stuff about classified information and about him seeming superold and addled behind the scenes.

   2025 May 21, Ezra Klein, quoting Jake Tapper, “How Groupthink Protected Biden and Re-elected Trump”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   Synonyms: addleheaded, addlebrained, addlepated, muddled, muddied, muddle-headed

3. obsoleteMorbid, corrupt, putrid, or barren.