meddlesome
Americanadjective
adjective
Synonym Usage
See curious.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of meddlesome
Explanation
A meddlesome person gets in your business in a way that's totally annoying. In other words, they meddle. Respect people's privacy by not being meddlesome. In Yiddish, the word "yenta" is used for people who interfere in other people's business. A defining quality of the "yenta" is that they're meddlesome. You could say that someone who's meddlesome gets "in the middle" of your business, if that's the way you like to remember words. Just remember that the spelling is different from "middle." I don't mean to be meddlesome, but you'd be well advised not to confuse the words "meddle" and "middle," even if one helps you remember the other.
Vocabulary lists containing meddlesome
The Secret Garden
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The Blood of Olympus
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Blood Water Paint
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Or at Lark on the Park, Spoon, Meddlesome Moth and a number of other restaurants here.
From Washington Post
Meddlesome midwifery and puerperal infection seem to cause the greater part of the mortality, either singly or in combination.
From Time Magazine Archive
Through the latter half of the 19th Century most of the nation's schoolchildren learned about Meddlesome Mattie, many another moral, immoral or amoral character in William Holmes McGuffey's famed series of Eclectic Readers.
From Time Magazine Archive
I don't propose to be a Meddlesome Mattie, but .
From Time Magazine Archive
I suppose it is the penalty of having been a regular Paul Pry in my childhood, in spite of poor Eleanor making me learn "Meddlesome Matty" as soon as I could speak.
From Beechcroft at Rockstone by Yonge, Charlotte Mary
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
