What's the difference between muddling and muddying?
Muddling
Definition:
(p. pr. & vb. n.) of Muddle
Example Sentences:
(1) Of course, every divorce is costly; but muddling through would be even more costly.
(2) The failure to make the single currency work with a wider group of countries means that the attempt to muddle through has reached the end of its natural life.
(3) Instead, we're likely to be stuck with more muddling-through.
(4) "In this era where we see growing open-mindedness, his actions are muddle-headed and careless," said the letter, which was briefly posted to the internet before it was taken down by censors .
(5) Although it remains unclear why he chose to place the muddled woman in a kitchen – clinging to her mug and surrounded by children's toys – as opposed to say, in a laboratory or a truck, he claims all the words were authentically spoken by "women in dozens of focus groups around the country", prior to being stitched together in this latest triumph for the fashionable, verbatim school of drama.
(6) McCluskey, with Unite probably Labour’s single largest donor, has claimed Labour lost the election not because it was too leftwing but largely because it had a muddled message on austerity and lacked a coherent narrative linking together individually popular policies.
(7) A toxic mix of cuts and muddled thinking about personalisation has led some to suggest that social work is an optional extra in adult social care.
(8) Hungry delphiniums, water-loving astilbe and drought-tolerant lupins would all be muddled together, with the thirstiest plants dictating the watering regime.
(9) United were sterile in possession, the ball was given away with monotonous regularity in dangerous positions and their muddled thinking was encapsulated by the sight of Phil Jones taking a couple of corners and Neil Swarbrick, the referee, penalising Antonio Valencia for a foul throw.
(10) Having read her book and met her, however, I wouldn't be surprised if the debate becomes muddled with how she presents her case – because she annoyed me so much when we met, we almost ended up having a row, despite the fact that I agree with a great deal of what she says.
(11) Drinks at Jade Bar are in keeping with the spa setting: fruity and herbaceous “muddles” (alcoholic or not) are a speciality, and the bartenders host mixology sessions on Sundays, or by appointment.
(12) At the time they were stressful – battling with traffic, fights over radio stations, squabbles over who was going to sit in the front seat and listening to a muddle of languages together with drama lines and songs to be sung.
(13) Sara Parkin London • It is very apposite of Zoe Williams ( Opinion , 25 February) to quote Roberto Unger with regard to the supposed “unmasking” of the Green party leader as some kind of political fraud; namely, she tried to answer a question directly and got into a bit of a muddle.
(14) Sean Spicer muddles answer when pressed on Trump and Russia investigation Read more Page, like Trump, has challenged US policy towards Russia and called for warmer relations between the two countries.
(15) Like Rona Jaffe's novel of the 50s, The Best of Everything – a book that Rakoff loves and reread before she started work on My Salinger Year – it is concerned with what it feels like to move to the big city, to take on your first job, and to struggle to survive on a tiny salary when all the while your dreams are seemingly being snuffed out at every turn, and your love life is spiralling into muddle and mayhem.
(16) Wallace is a hopeless deadpan dropout, a loser in love and a bumbling muddle.
(17) This is a very badly timed speech, showing some very muddled and dangerous thinking.
(18) The substitutions were muddle-headed, the team too negative, he might have won the World Cup but now he had lost it.
(19) The reality for many disabled people is it’s a muddle and a minefield to have an easy pee.
(20) 'A tremendous wrench': Sir Ivan Rogers's resignation email in full Read more He wrote: “I hope you will continue to challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking and that you will never be afraid to speak the truth to those in power.
Muddying
Definition:
(p. pr. & vb. n.) of Muddy
Example Sentences:
(1) On it rests the small village of Dholera – a cluster of houses with thatched roofs, muddy roads, and acres of flat, fertile land surrounding them.
(2) Huang Ren Zhong's striped parasol stands out against the muddy cliff of excavated earth.
(3) The other is to muddy the truth, and thereby weaken any international response.
(4) Muddy lines on buildings show how high the water rose.
(5) So I decided to literally track him down, the same way I would track an animal: from muddy footprints, to wet footprints, reading any clue I could in the undergrowth.
(6) Girls continue to fetch polluted water from muddy puddles and rivers, walking past broken hand-pumps and schools they would be attending if they had the time.
(7) Mighty Deer Stalker Tough 10km off-road (and very muddy) run in Peeblesshire, Scotland, which starts at dusk.
(8) It is counterintuitive, but terrorism is a really muddy concept.
(9) Never mind that it muddies the debate (the Le Pen dynasty and the millionaire Nigel Farage somehow turn out to be the real victims in all this) and trivialises the very people to whom the quack is pretending to genuflect.
(10) Six years after Rover's collapse, there is certainly plenty of open space at the centre of this formerly thriving town: hundreds of acres of flattened muddy fields where 6,000 skilled workers once toiled.
(11) Later still, the local police chief was removed as primary responder, but he still managed to muddy the waters (which the Brown family calls character assassination) by first releasing video of a black robber and then admitting it had nothing to do with Brown's shooting.
(12) They meticulously slotted together details to give a painstaking picture of the events that led up to the girls' disappearance, and then away from it; the innocent before and the nightmarish after; the last known seconds of the girls' meandering progress through familiar streets, arms linked, and then the frantic, increasingly heart-rending search that came to an end when the naked and decomposing - and, as we now know, partially burned - bodies of the two friends were found lying together, limbs tangled, at the bottom of a deep and muddy ditch, where the nettles grew tall.
(13) Further genetic explorations will, no doubt, provide clarity to the somewhat muddy picture of both etiology and complications.
(14) Facebook Twitter Pinterest An example of a rare Bechstein’s bat roost in a partially hollow oak tree, Finemere Wood, Buckinghamshire, ancient wood and nature reserve next to HS2 Photograph: Patrick Barkham for the Guardian After Prideaux dropped me off in a neighbour’s muddy farmyard, I climbed a hill into Finemere Woods, an ancient woodland owned by Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust .
(15) It has what Hab's design director, Isabel Allen, calls a "muddy, soggy landscape" which has the added benefit that it is fun for children to play in it.
(16) Top Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava was commissioned to design a sublime new station, like the one in nearby Liège, but this costly project won’t be finished until late 2015 at the earliest, so many of the expected two million visitors will have to pick their way around a muddy construction site.
(17) Click here to view video Dean Cundey, director of photography Romancing the Stone had been a very muddy, arduous shoot, so Back to the Future was simple by comparison – most of it was shot on the lot at Universal, or in neighbourhoods in Pasadena.
(18) If you start attacking Google, keep attacking Google – don't muddy the message by changing tack.
(19) Is democracy aided by another Conservative muddying the democratic waters?
(20) Most of the patients gave a history of bathing in muddy stagnant pools of water.