muddy
Americanadjective
-
muddier,
comparative
-
muddiest
superlative
-
abounding in or covered with mud.
-
not clear or pure.
muddy colors.
-
cloudy with sediment.
muddy coffee.
-
dull, as the complexion.
-
not clear mentally.
-
obscure or vague, as thought, expression, or literary style.
-
Horse Racing. denoting the condition of a track after a heavy, continuous rainfall has ceased and been completely absorbed into the surface, leaving it the consistency of thick mud.
verb (used with object)
-
muddies,
present (3rd person singular)
-
muddied,
past participle, past
-
muddying
present participle
-
to make muddy; soil with mud.
-
to make turbid.
-
to cause to be confused or obscure.
verb (used without object)
-
muddies,
present (3rd person singular)
-
muddied,
past participle, past
-
muddying
present participle
adjective
-
covered or filled with mud
-
not clear or bright
muddy colours
-
cloudy
a muddy liquid
-
(esp of thoughts) confused or vague
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
muddysimple
-
muddiessimple
-
have muddiedperfect
-
has muddiedperfect
-
am muddyingprogressive
-
are muddyingprogressive
-
is muddyingprogressive
-
have been muddyingperfect progressive
-
has been muddyingperfect progressive
Past
-
muddiedsimple
-
had muddiedperfect
-
was muddyingprogressive
-
were muddyingprogressive
-
had been muddyingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of muddy
First recorded in 1375–1425, muddy is from the late Middle English word muddi. See mud, -y 1
Explanation
Muddy is a verb that means to make dirty with mud. You might muddy up your mom's white shag rug if you don't take off your dirty hiking boots before you walk inside. The meaning of muddy is easy to remember: just look at the root word mud and think about smearing it on something. Muddy is also an adjective that describes something that's dirty and messy. When you're a child, you often end up looking muddy after playing outside, because you've been splashing in puddles and playing in the leaves. Muddy can also describe soil that's waterlogged, like your vegetable garden after a big rainstorm.
Vocabulary lists containing muddy
Can You Dig It? Words for Dirt and Soil
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Common Five-letter Words for Wordle, List 3
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Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"
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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.
See Examples For:
Ayer pushes the emotional and physical extremes and it feels like a dirge: a forced march through the muddy Alaskan wilderness with plenty of body horror on top.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 24, 2026
At intervals of 20 years and sometimes more often, it has lashed and splashed us, turned our living rooms into muddy aquariums, swept away our cars and houses, and sometimes hundreds of Angelenos.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2026
The helicopter he was on, hired by Rasuwagadhi, was unable to land at the location of the project, which was a muddy wasteland.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026
Two days after I had met the old musician on that damp muddy roadside, I found myself drawn into the passions of the war in a personal and – at the time – devastating way.
From BBC ● Aug. 27, 2026
The grounds of the plantation were dilapidated, muddy, and overgrown.
From "At Last She Stood" by Erin Entrada Kelly
At that point, the legal questions get even muddier.
From Slate ● Jul. 23, 2025
A second, the helpers, is a muddier designation.
From Salon ● May 9, 2025
In a statement issued through Cumbria Police, Mr and Mrs Cartmell said "Jay loved being outdoors" and "the muddier he could get the better".
From BBC ● Oct. 6, 2024
Yet as the smoke cleared and the fallout from the launch became apparent, the implications—for Starship itself and SpaceX’s southern Texas Starbase launch site—grew muddier.
From Scientific American ● May 4, 2023
I tore my jeans on barbed wire and got muddier still.
From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson
This is likely due to the high silt content of the riverbed; the Yellow River—the muddiest in the world—is named for the heavy loads of silt it carries.
From Science Magazine ● Jun. 10, 2022
“It’s a high road and, as all the muddiest are, both unassailable pure and also solidly earthed.”
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 27, 2021
On the second lap, I tripped and fell in a woodsy area coating myself with the muddiest mud.
From Golf Digest ● Sep. 11, 2019
Freedman's people are the ones with the muddiest shoes and wettest clothes, the people with the most to gain and most to lose.
From Time ● Oct. 26, 2017
He crawled along the gully in the direction that seemed the muddiest.
From "Holes" by Louis Sachar
Critics say direct admission muddies an already-confusing process with countless invitations.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 3, 2026
“Old inventory muddies the income statement. Cohort performance tells you that this new Opendoor 2.0 machine works.”
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 20, 2026
The first pull on Haaland muddies the waters.
From BBC ● Feb. 8, 2026
And so it muddies the waters in terms of how people might respond to it.
From Slate ● Jun. 9, 2025
She has "cluttered up" her mind with a wrong idea, an idea which dirties, muddies, soils her mind far worse than dust soils her house.
From Quit Your Worrying! by George Wharton James
Meta is moving to upend its fact-checking operations just as generative artificial intelligence has muddied the waters of the digital world.
From Barron's ● Sep. 10, 2026
U.S. stocks fell after surprisingly strong jobs data muddied the outlook for Federal Reserve policy.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026
The effects of the climate cycle on wildfires are muddied by countless other weather and ecological factors.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 22, 2026
This is where it starts to get muddied.
From Slate ● Apr. 30, 2026
This vast stream of life, dammed and muddied, is trying to sweep toward that fulfilment which all of us seek so fondly, but find so impossible to put into words.
From "Native Son" by Richard Wright
But recent regulatory changes are muddying this bullish narrative.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 2026
Musk's interest in buying the company risks muddying the waters when it comes to this trial, says Columbia Law School professor Dorothy Lund.
From BBC ● Apr. 28, 2026
Yet the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, personal consumption expenditures, rose 0.4% in December from the prior month and 3% from a year earlier, muddying the case for rate cuts.
From Barron's ● Feb. 20, 2026
It allows both parties to get the best price they believe they can afford or believe is fair without muddying the waters with personal obligations and emotional leverage.
From MarketWatch ● Jan. 19, 2026
The storm didn’t help the dirt path much, muddying it up within minutes as the rain came down harder.
From "Half Upon a Time" by James Riley
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.
