muddy the waters
Confuse the issue, as in Bringing up one irrelevant fact after another, he succeeded in muddying the waters. This metaphoric expression, alluding to making a pond or stream turbid by stirring up mud from the bottom, was first recorded in 1837.
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RELATED WORDS
blind, dim, darken, confuse, disguise, mask, muddy, overshadow, cover, camouflage, shroud, belie, blur, eclipse, misrepresent, veil, cloud, mystify, confound, complicate
Nearby words
muddled, muddlehead, muddleheaded, muddler, muddy, muddy the waters, mudeye, mudfat, mudfish, mudflap, mudflow
The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.