addle

adj

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.”

   “It was a feathered riddle; a mystery hatched out of an egg, and just as mysterious as if the egg had been addle!”

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.”

   “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.”

noun

1. (obsolete)Liquid filth; mire.
2. An unwise or intellectually impaired person.

verb

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 would by all means have avoided.”

   “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.”

   ““Oh, leave that silly old book alone. It can’t be good for you always reading. You’ll addle your brain, that’s what you’ll do, Philip.””

   “[Niccolò] Machiavelli had received an early lesson in the value of addling men's brains. […] [A] talent for addling men's brains is part of the armoury of any successful prince […].”

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.”

   “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 them to turn white.”

3. (Northern-England)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."”

   “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.”

4. (Northern-England)To thrive or grow; to ripen.

   “Kill ivy, or else tree will addle no more.”