1. Home
2. Idioms
3. muddy

muddy

---

---

muddy something up

 Lit.

1. to make water muddy; to stir up the mud in water, as at the bottom of a pond or river. Don't muddy the water up. It will clog our filters. Don't muddy up the water.

2. Fig. to make something unclear. You have really muddied this issue up. I thought I understood it. You sure muddied up this issue.

See also: muddy, up

muddy the water

Fig. to make something less clear; to make matters confusing; to create difficulty where there was none before. Things were going along quite smoothly until you came along and muddied the water. The events of the past month have muddied the water as far as our proposed joint venture is concerned.

See also: muddy, water

muddy the waters

to make a situation more confusing He's just trying to muddy the waters so we won't notice all the bad things he's done.

Usage notes: sometimes used with a modifier: The controversy has muddied the social waters of communities throughout this region.

Related vocabulary: muck something up

See also: muddy, water

muddy the waters

to make a situation more confused and less easy to understand or deal with The statistics you quoted didn't prove anything, they simply muddied the waters.

See also: muddy, water

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.

See also: muddy, water