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Addled   /ˈædəld/   Listen
Addled

adjective
1.
(of eggs) no longer edible.
2.
Confused and vague; used especially of thinking.  Synonyms: befuddled, muddled, muzzy, woolly, woolly-headed, wooly, wooly-minded.  "Your addled little brain" , "Woolly thinking" , "Woolly-headed ideas"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Addled" Quotes from Famous Books



... not bewitched. Surely this was his native village, which he had left but a day before. There stood the Kaatskill mountains—there ran the silver Hudson at a distance—there was every hill and dale precisely as it had always been—Rip was sorely perplexed—"That flagon last night," thought he, "has addled ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... God!" cried the Colonel, suddenly smiting his forehead with violence. "Of course! Fool! Fool that I am! Merciful God in Heaven—it's her boy—and I have saved him! Her boy! And I've been cudgelling my failing addled brains for months, wondering where I had seen his face before. He's my godson, Sister, and I haven't set eyes on him for the last—nearly ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... sermon. It would not be fair to the reader to give an abstract of that. When a man who has been bred to free thought and free speech suddenly finds himself stepping about, like a dancer amidst his eggs, among the old addled majority-votes which he must not tread upon, he is a spectacle for men and angels. Submission to intellectual precedent and authority does very well for those who have been bred to it; we know that the underground courses of their minds are laid in the Roman cement ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... going about his business, and that has addled her wits. There! she is crying upstairs. It will do her good to snivel a bit. It's the first time she has cried since I've ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... yolk regularly in the centre, they are good—but if otherwise, they are stale. The best possible method of ascertaining, is to put them into water, if they lye on their bilge, they are good and fresh—if they bob up an end they are stale, and if they rise they are addled, proved, ...
— American Cookery - The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables • Amelia Simmons

... different decisions, a dozen different indecisions, rioted tempestuously through his mind. To go was just as awkward as not to go! Not to go was just as awkward as to go! Over and over and over one silly alternative chased the other through his addled senses. Then just as precipitately as he had bolted to his room he began suddenly to hurl himself into his riding-clothes, yanking out a bureau drawer here, slamming back a closet door there, rummaging through a box, tipping over a ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... regarding him. Presently, Long Guled and the End of Time were missing; contrary to express orders they had returned to seek the dagger. To ensure discipline, on this occasion I must have blown out the long youth's brains, which were, he declared, addled by the loss of his weapon: the remedy appeared ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... that a one-armed man, slight in physique, whose brains have been addled by blows with billets of firewood, whose side is raw and bleeding, and who has a broken rib hampering his movements, is able to achieve feats that would be surprising if performed by a whole and ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... twelve years old he would be an expert horseman and a deadly rifle shot as well; at sixteen he would be able to perform all farm duties and rank with pride and confidence as an efficient burgher to take the field against any enemy. His brain is not addled with school lore, but is thoroughly versed and taught from nature's book. Hardened to the fatigue of long rides over unfamiliar country in search of stray cattle, the Boer youth has often to subsist upon a bit of ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas

... indeed! You must be crazy, Miriam Monfort! Why, she is eighty if she is an hour, and hobbles on a cane! I flatter myself I am not infirm yet; and, if you call a well-preserved, middle-aged, English woman, like me, old, your brains must be addled. Look at my hair, my teeth, my complexion"—pausing suddenly before me and confronting me fiercely. "See my step, my figure, and have more sense, if you are a little foreign Jewish child. As to sinfulness, we are all sinful beings, more ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... the King so pertly yesterday morn that the King doomed him, and fear has so addled his weak wits that he believes himself ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... the night I go to bed I count my money, and, says I, I'll not lock ut up, for I'll onnly be unlockin' again to-morrow; and doin' a thing and undoin' ut's a sign of a brain that's addled—like yours, Pole, if ye say ye didn't go to give me ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... weeks of angry discussion the King dissolved what was nicknamed the "Addled Parliament," because its enemies accused it of having accomplished nothing. In reality it had accomplished much for though it had not passed a single bill, it had shown by its determined attitude the growing stregnth of the people. For the next seven years James ruled ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... he pointed out with asperity, when she thoughtlessly joined unequal numbers. "Why not?" she asked. She must be addled. "It's against the rule." Mariana said, "I'm tired of rules." She always had put away the dominoes, but to-night she ignored them, and he returned the pieces to their morocco case. She relapsed into silence and a chair; and he sat with ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... in the days of their mother before them, when she came here to lay her eggs, like a cuckoo in another bird's nest—I wish they had been addled, I do indeed—we may expect to have the whole place turned topsy-turvy, I suppose. It is a pretty assortment, faith (as Tanty says herself); an old papist, and two young ones, fresh from a convent school—and of these, one a hoyden, and ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... as one who had been dealt a blow. For months he had been idly hatching an addled villainy. The revenge that he had promised himself for spurned and outraged love—the revenge that he had named retribution—was ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... a sophism, and to rescue from logical annihilation so many millions of fellow-creatures, how many wings of geese have been plundered! what oceans of ink have been benevolently drained! and how many capacious heads of learned historians have been addled and for ever confounded! I pause with reverential awe when I contemplate the ponderous tomes in different languages, with which they have endeavored to solve this question, so important to the happiness of society, but so involved in clouds of impenetrable obscurity. Historian after historian ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... (With a puzzled glance at him.) I can't quite follow that. Those sonnets of yours have perfectly addled me. Why should there be a ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw

... if he understood. "A queer country; I've been here before! Beautiful, bits of it; shining surf, yellow sands, and palms, but it plays some funny tricks with white men. About half of them at the factories get addled brains if they stay long. Believe in things the bushmen believe, ghosts and magic, and such. Perhaps it's the climate, but on this coast you get fancies you get nowhere else. I'd sooner take look-out on the fo'cas'le in a North Sea gale than ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss

... all right. But don't leave me, Jim. Whatever you do, don't leave me. I couldn't get along without you. Hit Bob a crack over the head and addled him so he ain't at himself yet. They took him away round here to his uncle's to keep him out of the way, and I drove out there to see him and stopped at distillery and stayed too long. Ever stay too ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read

... copy of Macaulay's "Essays." It seems entwined into my whole life as I look backwards. It was my comrade in my student days, it has been with me on the sweltering Gold Coast, and it formed part of my humble kit when I went a-whaling in the Arctic. Honest Scotch harpooners have addled their brains over it, and you may still see the grease stains where the second engineer grappled with Frederick the Great. Tattered and dirty and worn, no gilt-edged morocco-bound volume could ever take ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... directed his steps toward the far end of the garden, where a small gate led directly into the street at the end of which he dwelt. There! Again Frau Kahle and uncouth, elephantine Lieutenant Pommer! The May bowl, he thought, has been too strong for his addled brain. And he stepped silently aside on the velvety sward, under the clump of lilacs. The nightingale, from the centre of a thicket a score of paces away, still fluted and trilled a song of passion. And something like it, he made sure, big Pommer was also pouring into the tiny ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... and nearly empty cottage, where a middle-aged woman sat nursing a sick child. She looked worn and ill herself, and she had sore eyes. She told me that the child was her daughter's. Her daughter's husband had died of asthma in the workhouse, about six weeks before. He had not "addled" a penny for twelve months before he died. She said, "We hed a varra good heawse i' Stanley Street once; but we hed to sell up an' creep hitherto. This heawse is 2s. 3d. a week; an' we mun pay it, ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh

... that late breath'd gently forth, Now shifted east, and east by north; Bare trees and shrubs but ill, you know, Could shelter them from rain or snow; Stepping into their nests, they paddled, Themselves were chill'd, their eggs were addled; Soon every father bird, and mother, Grew quarrelsome, and peck'd each other; Parted without the least regret, Except that they had ever met; And learn'd in future to be wiser Than to neglect ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various

... Gray Michael and getting an answer to his remarks. The laborer's brains might be addled, but they still contained sane patches. He had heard of the fisherman's loss and now touched his ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... by apparently mischievous or irresponsible spirits?' I answer, that even if the immediate exciting cause of this current of ideas was some ill-designing being, the ideas themselves were not, necessarily, either evil or undignified; and that only such portion of the brain was addled as would be likely to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... said Knops, with a gesture of disdain, as he saw Leo blinking with wonder—"the commonest sort of a blaze; and yet men have nearly addled their brains over it, while we made it boil our kettles. It's the simplest and cheapest fuel one can have; but having utilized it so long, I am on the lookout for something new. Here, this is the way;" and again he opened ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays

... that some who write of prominent persons and political events indulge too much in sycophantic flattery, while others have their brains addled by brooding on some fancied wrong, or their minds have lost their even poise by dwelling on insane reforms or visionary projects. All this may have its use, but the subscriber has preferred to look at things in a more cheerful way, to pluck roses rather than ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... is dead in love with Dr. Rudd—really addled about him. And whenever he comes to see any of the children who are sick she is so solicitous and sweet and smiley that we call her, to ourselves, Ipecac Mollie. Other days, plain Mollie Cottontail. It seemed to me if we could just think ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher

... citizen!—this to a Roman noble! Hear me, Fathers and Conscript Senators—hear me!—who am a soldier and a man, and neither driveller nor dotard. I tell you, there is no conspiracy, hath been none, shall be none—save in the addled brains of yon prater from Arpinum, who would fain set his foot upon the neck of Romans. All is, all shall be peace in Rome, unless the terror of a few dastards drive you to tyranny and persecution, and from ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... with more tranquillity, "you are correct. Clidamira and Parthenissa would never have fled into the night without leaving a note upon the pin-cushion. The folly I kindled in your wife's addled pate has proven my ruin. Remains to make the best of Hobson's choice." He unlocked the door. "Gentlemen, gentlemen!" says he, with deprecating hand, "surely this disturbance is somewhat outre, a trifle misplaced, upon ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... mischief to the Merchant Service I could not have been submitted to a more microscopic examination. Greatly reassured by his apparent benevolence, I had been at first very alert in my answers. But at length the feeling of my brain getting addled crept upon me. And still the passionless process went on, with a sense of untold ages having been spent already on mere preliminaries. Then I got frightened. I was not frightened of being plucked; ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... once released, the entire incident properly regretted. When he found himself not only elaborately wrong but in court, laughter ceased. Anger replaced it. He had been first amused, then surprised, afterwards exasperated, emotions that finally addled into rage, not at others but at himself, which was rather decent. In any of the defeats of life, the simple blame others; the wise blame themselves; the evolved blame nobody. Lennox had not reached that high plane then but in directing ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... to talk about drinkin'. In fact, I've forgot what I did start to tell you. My mind is sorter addled now a days, anyhow, and I hav to jes let my tawkin' tumble out permiskuous. I'll take another whet at it afore long, and fill up ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... Polly as he shut the door carefully and ran down the hall to the nursery. "The more I study him the curiouser he seems to me. If he wan't so quick about some things you might think his wits were sort of addled—but they ain't, are they? Now, whatever do you reckon put the notion in his head to ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... grow addled," he continued. "They become clouded with a fog through which only the memories of the past and the days of their youth shine clear. Sometimes I talk of Virginia as if I were home-sick and wanted to go back to it,—yet I never do. I wouldn't go back to it for the world,—not now. I'm not an ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... than others, and would win only to backseats. Man's place in the ever-fluxing chaos of the world was definite and pre-ordained—if by no other token, then by denial that there was any ever-fluxing chaos. This was a mere bugbear of mankind's addled fancy; and, by stinging audacities of thought and speech, by vivid slang that bit home by sheerest intimacy into his listeners' mental processes, he drove the bugbear from their brains, showed them the loving ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... Kate, my love, that's just what I know nothing about. If they'd let me receive them in my own way, I'd do it well enough; but that abominable Mrs. Taddi-what's her name-has quite addled my brains and driven me distracted with trying to get me to ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... whenever she popped in her head at the door said, How do you do, my children? What are you doing here?' 'Official business, godmother.' 'Oho!' says this wicked Fairy. '- Tape!' And then the business all went wrong, whatever it was, and the servants' heads became so addled and muddled that they thought they ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... pullin' him along. See him, and you see her. If she wants huckleberries, she has huckleberries. If she wants violets, she has violets. See him now, lookin' down at her through the branches. And see her, turnin' her face up towards him. He's nigh upon addled. Shouldn't wonder this minute, if he didn't know enough to keep his hold o' the branch. Does that seem like our David, Mr. Lane, a bashful ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... to appease the tumult; in which, nevertheless, there had been nothing but noise. Nor was there less in the Senate, being suddenly rallied upon this occasion, where they that received the repulse, with others whose heads were as addled as their own, fell upon the business as if it had been to be determined by clamor till the Consuls, upbraiding the Senate that it differed not from the market-place, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... the neighborhood extensively for shanties; found one, and put his men in it for the night. In the morning we ran up on the tug, cooking breakfast for them as we ran, scrambling eggs in a wash-basin over a spirit-lamp:—and such eggs! nine in ten addled! It must be understood that wash-basins in the rear of an army are ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... altogether smiled on theirs. The wind, of late breath'd gently forth, Now shifted east, and east by north; Bare trees and shrubs but ill, you know, Could shelter them from rain and snow, Stepping into their nests, they paddled, Themselves were chill'd, their eggs were addled. Soon every father bird and mother Grew quarrelsome, and peck'd each other. Parted without the least regret, Except that they had ever met, And learn'd in future to be wiser Than ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... serve to prove the incalculable number of birds collected together. We did not allow them sufficient time, after landing, to lay all their eggs; for, had the season been further advanced, and we had found three eggs in each nest, the whole of them might probably have proved addled, the young partly formed, and the eggs of no use to us; but the whole of those we took turned out good, and had a particularly fine and delicate flavour. It was a work of considerable difficulty to get our booty safe into the boat—so ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous

... of a race that had wielded the sword of many centuries, but he was hot, excited, not a little addled with wine and rage. Deroulede was lucky; he would come out of the ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... little bird's nest all broken with the wind and torn with the storm, and two or three little eggs, with a few wet leaves over them, addled and cold and forsaken, and my little gipsy heart cried over those poor little motherless things, for I was motherless too. And up in a tree I have heard a thrush singing the song of a seraph and I have said, as I looked at the eggs, "You would have been singers too, ...
— Your Boys • Gipsy Smith

... cried Danton. "Challenges are flying right and left between these bully-swordsmen, these spadassinicides, and poor devils of the robe who have never learnt to fence with anything but a quill. It's just ——— murder. Yet if I were to go amongst messieurs les nobles and crunch an addled head or two with this stick of mine, snap a few aristocratic necks between these fingers which the good God has given me for the purpose, the law would send me to atone upon the gallows. This in a land that is striving after liberty. Why, Dieu me damne! I am ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... Indians that they did not think it worth their while to stop his progress, having been certainly informed by their spies that his camp was destitute of warriors, and that he had only with him a crew of drunken females, a low-built, old, effeminate, sottish fellow, continually addled, and as drunk as a wheelbarrow, with a pack of young clownish doddipolls, stark naked, always skipping and frisking up and down, with tails and horns like those ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... common stews, filled with the ruck and the filth, the scum and dregs, of society—hereditary inefficients, degenerates, wrecks, lunatics, addled intelligences, epileptics, monsters, weaklings, in short, a very nightmare of humanity. Hence, fits flourished with us. These fits seemed contagious. When one man began throwing a fit, others followed his lead. I have seen seven men down with fits at the same time, making the air hideous with ...
— The Road • Jack London

... needs not to be a melancholy one. His benevolent disposition was more effective for good than his silent presumption for harm. He might have been mischievous but for the lack of words: instead of being astonished at his inspirations in private, he might have clad his addled originalities, disjointed commonplaces, blind denials, and balloon-like conclusions, in that mighty sort of language which would have made a new Koran for a knot of followers. I mean no disrespect to the ancient Koran, but one would not desire ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... dinner service that had belonged to his grandmother, old Vixen Tod. Then the midges had been very bad. And he had failed to catch a hen pheasant on her nest; and it had contained only five eggs, two of them addled. Mr. Tod had had an ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter

... ravine-pitted region—that he it is who originally planted the town in this uncomfortable, clayey hollow, and has thrown the houses into heaps, and entangled the streets, and wantonly created the town's unaccountably rude and rough and deadly existence, and addled men's brains with disconnected nonsense, and consumed their hearts with a fear of life. Yes, it comes to me that it must be he who, during the long six months of winter, causes cruel snowstorms from the plain to invade ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... I wonder how Johnson set himself doggedly to it—to a work of imagination it seems quite impossible, and one's brain is at times fairly addled. And yet I have felt times when sudden and strong exertion would throw off all this mistiness of mind, as a ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... alone. He writes on one occasion: "What think you of a fifteen-mile ride out, ditto in, and a lunch on the road, with a wind-up of six o'clock dinner in Doughty Street?" And again: "Not knowing whether my head was off or on, it became so addled with work, I have gone riding over the old road, and shall be truly delighted to meet or be overtaken by you." As a young man he was extremely fond of riding, but as I never remember seeing him on horseback I think ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens

... Platonism. When accused of obscurities and extravagances, he said that, like the ostrich, he laid his eggs in the sands, which would prove vital and prolific in time; however, these ostrich-eggs have proved to be addled. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... gave him a vicious kick, Show Low putting in an extra one for his murdered bunkie. Last of all, McKee approached the prostrate man, and made the mistake which was to cost him his life by booting Peruna cruelly. The man was a stupid fellow by nature, and what wits he had were addled by the habit he had acquired of consuming patent-medicines containing alcohol, morphin, and other stimulating and stupefying drugs. He was as revengeful as stupid, and could have forgiven McKee's putting ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... answered Ashley, who had given little heed to Lindley's words. "But to my mind such a maid would not be worth the wooing. 'Tis to be hoped that Treadway has cleared Farquhart's addled wits as well as he has cleared his voice," he added, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... Willet was, while the dinner was preparing; and if his brain were ever less clear at one time than another, it is but reasonable to suppose that he addled it in no slight degree by shaking his head so much that day. That Mr Chester, between whom and Mr Haredale, it was notorious to all the neighbourhood, a deep and bitter animosity existed, should come down there for the sole purpose, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... very warm morning—the parrot is asleep on the door (she heard her name, and immediately awakened)—and my brains are completely addled by having ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... cap. To warm her hands she put them from time to time in his breast. How long ago it all was! Their son would have been thirty by now. Then he looked back and saw nothing on the road. He felt dreary as an empty house; and tender memories mingling with the sad thoughts in his brain, addled by the fumes of the feast, he felt inclined for a moment to take a turn towards the church. As he was afraid, however, that this sight would make him yet more sad, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... he can find mirrored some delicate beauty or truth, he tosses between the alternatives of self-grandeur and self-disgust. It is a painful matter, this endless self-scrutiny. We are all familiar with the addled ego of literature—the writer whom constant self-communion has made vulgar, acid, querulous, and vain. And yet it is remarkable that of so many who meddle with the combustible passions of their own ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... at once what Steve meant. "That's what was trying to get to the surface in this addled brain of mine last night. Of course! Wallops Island is an unclassified launch site. Everything about the launchings is reported in scientific publications! But, Steve, the Soviet Embassy was interested ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin

... is a good deal due to the lack of matter. Speech is often barren, but silence does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled nest-egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion."—George Eliot's ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... pulled out some pea-hen's eggs, which they distributed among the diners. Turning his head, Trimalchio saw what was going on. "Friends," he remarked. "I ordered pea-hen's eggs set under the hen, but I'm afraid they're addled, by Hercules I am let's try them anyhow, and see if they're still fit to suck." We picked up our spoons, each of which weighed not less than half a pound, and punctured the shells, which were made of flour and dough, and as a matter of fact, I very nearly threw mine away ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... infant almost into Brock's face. He did not observe that it was a beautiful child and that it had a look of terror in its eyes; he only knew that he was glaring wildly at the fiendish nurse, the truth slowly beating its way into his be-addled brain. For a full minute he stared as if petrified. Then, administering a sickly grin, he sought to bring his wits up to the requirements of the extraordinary situation. He lifted his hand and mumbled: "Come, Raggles! I haven't a biscuit, but here, have a ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon

... should have told your lordship, too, of the King of Prussia's triumphs[1]—but they are addled too! I hoped to have had a few bricks from Prague to send you towards building Mr. Bentley's design, but I fear none will come from thence this summer. Thank God, the happiness of the menagerie does not depend upon administrations or victories! The happiest of beings ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... as that Prince's maudlin brain, Which, addled by some gilded toy, Tired, gives his sweetmeat, and again Cries for it, like a humoured ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... mocked at the "addled Parliament," but a statesman would have learned much from the anger and excitement that ran through its stormy debates. During the session the king had been frightened beyond his wont by the tone of the Commons, but the only impressions which remained in his mind were those of wounded pride ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... her that's addled her," David explained. "It's these highly charged, hypersensitive young women that go to pieces under the modern pressure. They're the ones that need licking into shape ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... the whole going by the name of “Ostler’s Plantations,” Mr. Ostler being the agent employed in the work and becoming himself (as will be seen) eventually the proprietor. Thus of two eggs which Mr. Parkinson brooded over, and desired to hatch, one may be said to have been addled, and the other did ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... gran' spectacle! Magnifique! By gar! She bin comedown firsrate. Frenchy, you have missed your cue. Take the advice of a friend. Don't stay here, putting addled eggs under a painted goose. Just do that act on the stage, and you'll have to wear seven-league boots to get out of the way of ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... its eggs. When thus removing the moss and rough bark, the eggs may often be destroyed, and in the absence of rough bark to shelter them, it is probable that the insect would probably not lay the eggs at all, or that, if it did, they would either become addled, or fall to the ground. I may add here that we have found a piece of square tin the best thing for scraping down the trees, and that the hair-like fibre of the sago palm is an excellent thing for rubbing ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... she arranged her discarded dress, and closed her bandbox. "Who shall I have to work for when father's gone, if you are to go and take notions in your head and be an old maid, because some folks are no better than they should be? 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. One old maid's enough out o' two sisters; and I shall do credit to a single life, for God A'mighty meant me for it. Come, we can go down now. I'm as ready as a mawkin can be—there's nothing awanting to frighten ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... emphatic accents of supreme contempt—"What braying asses!—What earth- snouting swine! Saw you not yon crowd of whimpering idiots flying helter-skelter like chaff before the wind, weeping, wailing, and bemoaning their miserable little sins, scattering dust on their addled pates, and howling on their gods for mercy,—all forsooth! because for once in their unobserving lives they behold the river red instead of green! Ay me! 'tis a thing to laugh at, this crass, and brutish ignorance of the multitude,—no teaching will ever cleanse their minds from the cobwebs ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... after itself. But come, we have been serious long enough. You are tired with your day's work, Miss Julia, and Aaron, too. I've been in the committee room of the House of Commons half the day, and my head's addled with figures. Here comes our supper. Let us drop the more serious things of life. We'll try and put a little colour into ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... fellows, head the old lady off before she knocks the table endwise," was off with a rush, the others hotfoot after him, waving arms and shouting until poor old Betsy Brindle's addled head must have thought all the imps of the lower regions turned loose upon her. Circling wide, the boys made a complete barrier beyond which the poor tipsy cow dared not force her way. So with a hopelessly pathetic "moo" ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... This only applies to desire from within, as I am strongly susceptible to influences from without at any time.) There seems nothing to be done but to bow to the storm till it passes over. Anything I do during the time it lasts, even household work, is badly done. The brain seems to become addled for the time being, while after gratification of desire it seems to attain an additional quickness and cleverness. Perhaps this cause contributes to the small amount of intellectual and artistic ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... crossly. 'By what Robert tells me of him he must have been one of the people who get ill in their minds for want of a good mouth-filling laugh now and then. The man who can't amuse himself a bit out of the world is sure to get his head addled somehow, poor creature.' ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... always that sad, set face of my poor father's, I could look up and around, and whistle to the squirrels, and note the woodpecker running round the tree near me. It has remained a mystery to me all my life, Melody, that this bird's brains are not constantly addled in his head, from the violence of his rapping. When I was a little boy, I tried, I remember, to nod my head as fast as his went nodding: with the effect that I grew dizzy and sick, and Mother Marie thought I was going to die, and said the ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... stupid person, on the whole, he must have thought me, hardly fit to be trusted with so superb a car. My mouth, I fancy, was wide open; I can't swear that I wasn't pop-eyed. This last development had complete addled me. Marie Le Clair! Jacques ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... you may take it from me, That of all the afflictions accurst With which a man's saddled And hampered and addled, A diffident nature's the worst. Though clever as clever can be - A Crichton of early romance - You must stir it and stump it, And blow your own trumpet, Or, trust me, you haven't ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... and the Whigs intend to make some violent addresses against a peace, if not prevented. God knows what will become of us.—It is still prodigiously cold; but so I told you already. We have eggs on the spit, I wish they may not be addled. When I came home tonight I found, forsooth, a letter from MD, N.24, 24, 24, 24; there, do you know the numbers now? and at the same time one from Joe,(13) full of thanks: let him know I have received it, and am glad of his ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... died before you were born. For the sake of his widow's money I gave her my name, and was fool enough to fall in with her whim of pride that you should be brought up as a Prince Delgrado. I suppose Stampoff urged your mother to reveal the facts to that chit of a girl who has addled your brain, and she, fortunately, had sense enough to see that you can not continue to occupy the throne five seconds after it becomes known that you are a mere alien, that your name is Alexander Talbot, and that I, Michael Delgrado, who married a foreigner in order that I might live, and ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... of that description," he replied. "She is not worth talking about—a mere bundle of egotism, ignorance, and red-headed lewdness. If she were even a type, she might be worth considering; but she is simply an abnormal sport, with a little brain addled by notions that she is like Hypatia, and a large impudence rendered intolerable by the fact that she has money. Her father is a decent man. He ought ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... Stale eggs, if it was quite certain that they were too far gone to be able to be hatched, were grudgingly permitted, but all eggs offered for sale had to be submitted to an inspector, who, on being satisfied that they were addled, would label them "Laid not less than three months" from the date, whatever it might happen to be. These eggs, I need hardly say, were only used in puddings, and as a medicine in certain cases where an emetic was urgently required. Milk was forbidden inasmuch as it could not be obtained ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... Blanche's accent and vocabulary, and read to her out of books which would have addled the brains of most little maids of six; but she seemed to enjoy them, although she seldom made a comment. He was always ready to play games with her, but she was a gentle little thing, and, moreover, tired easily. She preferred to ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton

... 'Pity you hed n't stayed on it,' says he. 'I wish to the land I hed,' says I. An' then I come away, for my tongue's so turrible spry an' sarcustic that I knew if I stopped any longer I should stir up strife. There's some folks that'll set on addled aigs year in an' year out, as if there wa'n't good fresh ones bein' laid every day; an' Lije Dennett's one of 'em, when ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Your Excellency agrees, I would prefer taking him back to Nessus first, for the sake of the morale factor here. Some of them are so addled now at having been caught chasing up wrong alleys that ...
— Irresistible Weapon • Horace Brown Fyfe

... for which I shall sell this milk will buy me three hundred eggs. These eggs, allowing for what may prove addled, will produce at least two hundred and fifty chickens. The chickens will be fit to carry to market about Christmas, when poultry always brings a good price, so that by May-day I shall have money enough to buy ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... for the failure of Greece to join the Allies. The one who is to blame for that never is the one who is talking to you. The one who is talking is always the one who, had they followed his advice, could have saved the "situation." They did not, and now it is involved, not to say addled. The military attache of Great Britain volunteered to set the situation before me in a few words. After explaining for two hours, he asked me to promise not to repeat what he had said. I promised. Another diplomat, who was projected ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... dear, what utter folly! Really, when I think of the way in which I have helped you, and the splendid productions which are being palmed off to the world as yours, you might treat me with a little more consideration. My head is addled with all I have to do, and now you come down to ask me ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade

... Jabez piteously, "if you don't stop to once, the little bit of brain I've got'll be addled! Iss, my word, addled beyond recovery, and me a poor man with ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... regarded him with sharp distrust. "You interest me strangely, George.... But perhaps you're no more addled than usual. Consider me gently prepared against the worst—and ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... "I've come for my answer. Have you sense enough in your addled pate to understand that, man? I've ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... woods pretty well, but I'm blamed if I know where we are now. Everything looks turned around; I'd swear now, that that was the west over there, yet there is the sun a-risin' as big as life. I'm plumb addled!" ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... madman's fancy utterly—fruit of a brain that ambition had completely addled; and I do not believe that Don John had any part in it or even knowledge of it. Escovedo saw himself, perhaps, upon the throne of one or the other of the two kingdoms as Don John's vice-regent—for himself and for me, if I stood by him, there was such power ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... of a shriveled berry. Nothing could exceed his look of picturesque Italian ruin and dethronement, heightened by what seemed just one glimmering peep of reason, insufficient to do him any lasting good, but enough, perhaps, to suggest a torment of latent doubts at times, whether his addled dream ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... unprofitableness &c. (inutility) 645. waste, desert, Sahara, wild, wilderness, howling wilderness. V. be - unproductive &c. adj.; hang fire, flash in the pan, come to nothing. [make unproductive] sterilize, addle; disable, inactivate. Adj. unproductive, acarpous[obs3], inoperative, barren, addled, infertile, unfertile, unprolific[obs3], arid, sterile, unfruitful, infecund[obs3]; sine prole; fallow; teemless[obs3], issueless[obs3], fruitless; unprofitable &c. (useless) 645; null and void, of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... whether the public will share our grief) that Mr. Hawthorne is out of health and is thereby prevented, for the present, from proceeding with another of his promised (or threatened) Romances, intended for this magazine'; or, 'Mr. Hawthorne's brain is addled at last, and, much to our satisfaction, he tells us that he cannot possibly go on with the Romance announced on the cover of the January magazine. We consider him finally shelved, and shall take early occasion to bury him under a heavy article, carefully summing up his merits (such as they were) ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... thinkin' er nuttin', Marse Gabriel. We ole uns kin set down en steddy, but de young dey up en does wid dere brains ez addled ez de inside uv er bad aig. 'T wan' dat ar way in de old days w'en we all hed de say so ez ter w'at wuz en w'at wan't de ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow



Words linked to "Addled" :   muzzy, confused, stale



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