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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



... statue-like, through the 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 under-ground courses of their minds are laid in the Roman cement of tradition, and that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... we can confidently defy Professor Flint to produce the names of half a dozen dogmatic Atheists, and we will give him the whole world's literature to select from. Does he think that the brains of an Atheist are addled? If not, why does he make the Atheist first affirm that there is no God, and then affirm the impossibility of man's ever knowing whether there is a God or not? How could a man who holds his judgment in suspense, or who thinks the universal mystery insoluble to us, dogmatise upon the ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote

... Before the days of shaving; No! ne'er was mingled such a draught, In palace, hall, or arbor, As freemen brewed, and tyrants quaffed, That night in Boston harbor! It kept King George so long awake, His brain at last got addled, It made the nerves of Britain shake With seven score millions saddled; Before that bitter cup was drained Amid the roar of cannon, The western war-cloud's crimson stained The Thames, the Clyde, the Shannon; Full many a six-foot grenadier The flattened grass had ...
— Tea Leaves • Various

... You are concocting sharp speeches for your abominable tongue. I know it. I can see it in your eyes. That is the way you have brought up your children, Giovanni. I congratulate you. Upon my word, I congratulate you with all my heart! Not that I ever expected anything better. You addled your own brains with curious foreign ideas on your travels—the greater fool I for letting you run about the world when you were young. I ought to have locked you up in Saracinesca, on bread and water, until you understood the world well enough ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... Tessier's addled brains are restored by careful nursing, receives a document from Leroyne & Co., which ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... 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 ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... give a whoop about the chain in the gold purse. It's just one of the little coincidences that hang people now and then. And as for last night—if she's the kind of a girl you say she is, and you think she had anything to do with that, you—you're addled, that's all. You can depend on it, the lady of the empty house last week is the lady of last night. And yet your train acquaintance was ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... 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 a new gown. Let me ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... These addled head swains, Of paralyzed brains, Who charge me with corrupting youth, Are a perjuring pair, In Belzebub's chair, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... but it was a china plate, the last of the 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 ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter

... eggs,—they were unusually large,—but she never felt quite comfortable on them, and whether it was because she used to get cramp and go off the nest, or because the season was bad, or what, she never could tell; but every egg was addled but one, and the one that did hatch gave her more trouble than any chick she had ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... expecting her confinement in May, and had no thoughts but for the child. Heppner began to marvel at himself for having been so domestic all the winter. Surely his limbs must have been benumbed and this brain addled! He really must rouse himself now and get a few new ideas into his head. So he easily slipped back into his old wild ways of life, and could less and less understand how he had come to live ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... the faint warmth of her body, close to his. Then silence seized upon Thomas Frye; he grew sad without knowing why. The figures at his side, curled in the hay, seemed to him ghostly as a dream. Poor Thomas; he was addled with moonlight; moonlight over Anna, over him, moonlight over the hills, over the road, and voices unseen in the shadows, and shadows ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan

... 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 ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... 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 ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... little patches, Which indeed if they don't smutch you, 'Tis they're dead before they touch you! While for kisses vain and greedy, Kisses flattering, kisses needy, They are birds that never waddled Out of eggs that only addled! Some there are leave spots behind them, On your cheek for years you'd find them: Little ones, I do beseech you, Never let such birdies ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... young hawk, and there a goslin, and next a strutting turkey, and then a dodo, a loon, an ostrich, a wren, a magpie, a cuckoo, and a wag-tail. But the old continental hen has now set so long, that we conclude that her eggs are addled, and incubation frustrated. During all this time, the Gallick cock is on his roost at Elba, with his ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... an' addled your brains for you! They'll have to answer some day for the things they've put into your head! I took as good care o' your girl as I did o' my own. She wouldn't ha' died o' that! But I can't wake the dead. If a body is to die, she dies—in this ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann

... 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

... 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 success, but won't put him to ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... 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 ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice-peg, We have learned to bottle our parents twain in the yolk of an addled egg, We know that the tail must wag the dog, as the horse is drawn by the cart; But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: "It's clever, but ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... 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

... fishing, shooting, and field work seemed quite in the background, and very insignificant compared with my treasure hunt; but Alec seemed to be quite indifferent to it; in fact, I think he had an idea that my fall had slightly shaken my brain, and perhaps addled it. I more than suspected this, for I noticed he kept his eye ever on me, and would scarcely let me out of his sight. ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... fifty years' exegetical grubbing, weeding, and pruning at 'the mighty primitive forest of the Bible, the next generation should persist in saying that the Rationalist had destroyed the forest only in his own addled imagination, and that it is ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... remember in days gone by, how, with my juvenile mind addled and my juvenile fingers tingling after an application of the "tawse," I have stared at my arithmetic book in despair—hopelessly ignorant of the meaning of words and terms, utterly incapable of comprehending explanatory ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne

... was the most perfect type of all these physical perfections, a survival of those wondrous Marquesan women who addled the wits of the whites a century ago. There was no blemish on her, nor ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... 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" and a look at her adversaries ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... for the Quarterly Review. Now, a wish from my liege master is a command. I had half engaged myself elsewhere, thinking that he did not quite appreciate such a trump as I know Borrow to be. He is as full of meat as an egg, and a fresh laid one—not one of your Inglis breed, long addled by over-bookmaking. Borrow will lay you golden eggs, and hatch them after the ways of Egypt; put salt on his tail and secure him in your coop, and beware how any poacher coaxes him with 'raisins' or reasons ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... 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, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... breathed 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 chilled, their eggs were addled, Soon every father bird and mother Grew quarrelsome, and pecked each ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Oh, dear! I'm afraid I've addled my brains trying to cultivate them, and what I'm more afraid of is that I've addled my common sense." She spoke with such gayety, with such a roguish twinkle, and curve of lip, that neither then nor later did he suspect that she was the heroine ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... dread sight the mother's grief No mortal tongue can tell. A broken heart, an addled brain, When ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... native village, which he had left but the 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 ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... greatest consequence in the eyes of his nation, who sees the most birds in his nest, and is able to carry most vultures to prey upon the corpses of his enemies. Is the barren woman beloved by her husband? Ask me if the male bird watches by the nest of her who sits on addled eggs. I shall tell you "No," nor does the husband love or value the wife who lives alone in his cabin with none to ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... now to my improvement on your idea? Are my brains not quite so addled as you thought them when you wrote? Don't suppose I'm at all overboastful about my own ingenuity. Cleverer tricks than this trick of mine are played off on the public by swindlers, and are recorded in the newspapers every week. I only want to show you that my assistance is not less ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... sir, but the moon shone on his face when he took his hat off to wipe his forehead, and it looked for all the world like an addled duck-egg." ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... 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 roll, do. Give me a—a kiss!" ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon

... was as a reprieve from death! The trot had almost dislocated her bones, and shaken her up like an addled egg, and the change to racing speed afforded infinite relief. She could scarcely credit her senses, and she felt a tendency to laugh again as she glanced over her shoulder. But that glance removed the tendency, for it ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... Jarl Rongvold, that our brains are so addled that we cannot distinguish between black and white? Is thy memory so short, is thy slavery to the King so complete, that thou must say evil is good and good evil? Hast thou and has the King so soon forgotten that two strangers came ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... 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 ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... can be fried—just as all know they can be addled. We of the old south pickled ours. Go and do likewise if you want an experience. Begin by scalding the brains—putting them on in cold water very slightly salted, then letting them barely strike a boil. Skim out, drop in cold water, ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams

... or, at least, they might have brought him up better. Anyhow, die they did, all three; and Mrs. Hen Sparrow was so delighted that she forgot all about her dead husband, and forgot her eggs which were getting addled, and went about chirruping until she found another husband, and made another nest, and (I am sorry to say) ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke

... and learn that yourselves. And when you mark How grimly addled all the daring is Now in those brains, do as your hearts shall bid you, And ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie

... 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 ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various

... dark and shaky. "Addled," pronounced August. After this a number more appeared as promising as ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • 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 affair ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... not a case with which one small addled mind could deal, or at least, so Maggie decided. She had a hazy idea that Alfred was adding something to the original purchase price of her young sisters, but she was quite at a loss to know how to refuse the offer of such a "grand 'hoigh" gentleman, even though ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo

... does. Sometimes he tells you things that you never suspected and you don't believe him at first, but you find they're true; things that have been locked up in his addled brain so long that they're out of date, and you don't know how to profit by them or handle them, ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton

... 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

... such dangerous tricks Their own heresiarchs called them heretics, (Strange that one term such distant poles should link, The Priestleyan's copper and the Puseyan's zinc); Poems that shuffle with superfluous legs A blindfold minuet over addled eggs, Where all the syllables that end in ed, Like old dragoons, have cuts across the head; Essays so dark Champollion might despair To guess what mummy of a thought was there, Where our poor English, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... John 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 ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... 1915. Wasted energy brooding over the addled eggs of the past. Are the High Gods bringing our new Iliad to grief in a spirit of wanton mischief? At whose door will history leave the blame for the helpless, hopeless fix we are left in—rotting with disease and told to take ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... hopping about, he says, after the rein-deer, shooting them with a little clumsy bow, and arrows tipt with bone, and dressing themselves in their skins. Procopius knew these Scritfins too (but he has got (as usual) addled in his geography, and puts them in ultima Thule or Shetland), and tells us, over and above the reindeer-skin dresses, that the women never nursed their children, but went out hunting with their husbands, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... So addled in my cranium meet Popery and Corn that oft I doubt, Whether, this year, 'twas bonded Wheat, Or bonded Papists, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... these here 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

... "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 ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... in the end, although some took longer 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 clarity of God's design, and, thereby, ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... my boy; and if you find an addled egg or two, save them for me. Bring then on, and we'll ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn

... you very much for your note. This morning I am stupid again; can do nothing at all; am no good "comme plumitif." I think it must be the cold outside. At least that would explain my addled head ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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 to ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade

... hasn't happened to 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 by all ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... and modestly inquired if the "honorable society"—myself and chance companions—would visit that very afternoon the famous chapel in which the crown of Hungary lies buried. I glanced curiously at him, thinking that possibly the thunder had addled his brain. "Oh, the honorable society may walk in sunshine all the way to the chapel at five o'clock," he said with an encouraging grin. "These Danube storms come and go as quickly as a Tsigane from a hen-roost. See! the thunder has stopped ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... 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 rebel ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... lass," he would reply; "I've addled nowt all t' day. But thou promised, when we wed, to tak me for better or worse; an' if t' worse wasn't t' hounds, it would happen be hosses or drink. Sithee, Mally, I've browt thee a two-three snowdrops; thou can wear ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman

... addled egg, and gave Ram Jennings a groat for his trouble, and for telling him all about how it was obtained, and what followed, keeping the man, and questioning him a good deal, as he smiled and frowned over the task he ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn

... Courtiers and noblemen and great lords were waiting for their coming, some of whom helped him to dismount from the horse, for by this time the beggar was so overcome with wonder that he stared like one moon-struck, and as though his wits were addled. Then, leading the way up the palace steps, they conducted him from room to room, until at last they came to one more grand and splendid than all the rest, and there sat the king himself waiting ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle

... twist the bushman's head back and forth and to feed the smudge with punk-wood. This was no night-task for any man, nor even for him who had forgotten how to do aught else. But the excitement of cutting out the Arangi had been communicated to his addled brain, and, with vague reminiscent flashes of the strength of life triumphant, he shared deliriously in this triumph of Somo by applying himself to the curing of the head that was in itself ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... weeviled such a condition that they are wheat, and rancid butter, and not exportable. Mouldy flour, ancient eggs, but I've yet to rusty wheat, rancid butter, meet a farmer who wants to damaged cotton, addled eggs, and corner the market. They spoiled goods generally are not remind me of a town that was exportable. But it never moved to build a gallows occurred to me to be thankful for because all its neighbors had this ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... call for much astuteness. I don't suppose there's a married woman in the world in full command of her wits. You've noticed how foolish most of them are. That's why. It isn't that they were born foolish. They've simply been addled by enforced adaptation to mates of lower intelligence. Oh, I'm not scolding. I'm merely stating a natural, observed, psychological fact. The woman who marries says good-bye to the orderly working of her faculties. For that she may get compensations, with which I don't intend ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... meant to do a single thing he had already done. Events had shaped themselves for him. He was surprised, dumfounded, overwhelmed. The only thought that now ran through his addled brain was that he simply had to do something. He couldn't stand there forever, like a fool, waving a pistol. In a minute or two they would all be laughing at him. It was ghastly. The wave of self-pity, of self-commiseration submerged him completely. Why, oh ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon

... is aware 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 nettles, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... followed so closely, so abruptly by the most insolent display of bad manners he had ever known, gave him ample excuse for reflection, and if he failed to obtain the full benefit of Striker's discourse it was because he had no power to command his addled thoughts. As a matter of fact, he was debating within himself the advisability of asking his host a few direct and pointed questions. A fine regard for Striker's position deterred him,—and to this regard ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... 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 ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... substitute. Many a thought is a Leda egg, imprisoning twin life-principles, which,, incubated in the eccaleobion brain of an author-borrower, have blessed the world; but without such a foster-parent, in some neglected nest staled and addled, had never burst ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... ride on horseback; when 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 dried biltong (junked beef ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas

... 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 Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... several recensions. Hinduism is possible as a creed only to those who select. In its literal sense it means simply all the beliefs and rites recognized in India, too multifarious and inconsistent for the most hospitable and addled brain to hold. But the Hindus, who are as loth to abolish queer beliefs and practices as they are to take animal life, are also the most determined seekers after a satisfying form of religion. Brahmanic ritual and Buddhist monasticism demand the dedication of a life. Not everyone ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... getting panicky at the outset," declared Jerry comfortably. "Follow orders and use your brains; and remember that if you get addled you can always consult Tim. Tim has a world of common sense and a heap of knowledge of odd sorts. And more than that, he's never swept off his feet by the cost of things. Having been brought up in the company of Rolls-Royce cars, and diamond rings, and thousand-dollar dogs they don't move him an ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... Vanringham resumed, 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

... built in the fork of a little hemlock, about fifteen inches from the ground, and was a thick, firm structure, composed of the finer material of the woods, with a lining of very delicate roots or rootlets. There were four young birds and one addled egg. We found it in a locality about the head-waters of the eastern branch of the Delaware, where several other of the rarer species of warblers, such as the mourning ground, the Blackburnian, the chestnut-sided, and the speckled Canada, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... It would, I am sure, move his pity to think how many old dogs he hath set to learn new tricks, how many venerable parrots he hath taught to sing a new song, how many gray heads he hath addled by vain attempts to exchange their old Mumpsimus for his new Sumpsimus. But let it pass. Humana perpessi sumus—All changes round us, past, present, and to come; that which was history yesterday becomes fable to-day, and the truth ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... 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 into the service by William Jennings Bryan, said if ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... (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

... (or green or red) That swarm the bass-wood tree, But wag no more thine addled head Nor clack thy tongue ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... fellow was anxious to cheer me up, and ordered one wine after another. Heine hunted up his reminiscences of our merry Rienzi times in Dresden, until at last the pair conducted me, staggering along in an addled condition, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... the supposed corn was lodged in the midst of it. An inflammation of the lungs? a darling child sick? He opened a coffin and exposed a baby skeleton. "Look! your cher enfant will be like this, but for fifty centimes I will save it, I guarantee. Pelt me with rotten apples, with addled eggs, if I fail. This plaster placed here (he applied it to the breast of the skeleton), and your child breathes thus (drew a long inhalation)—is well. Warts (a labourer held up a horny hand, the middle joint of the little finger disfigured ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... 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 ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... one of these eggs ever addled, (With wonder be it spoken!) Not one of them ever was lost, Not one ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... Michaelsburg whom he loved far above all the rest—Brother John, a poor half-witted fellow, of some twenty-five or thirty years of age. When a very little child, he had fallen from his nurse's arms and hurt his head, and as he grew up into boyhood, and showed that his wits had been addled by his fall, his family knew not what else to do with him, and so sent him off to the Monastery of St. Michaelsburg, where he lived his simple, witless life upon a sort of sufferance, as though he were a tame, ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle

... a 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 in store as no man ever dreamed ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... them; for what would anyone think that heard your worship calling a barber's basin Mambrino's helmet without ever seeing the mistake all this time, but that one who says and maintains such things must have his brains addled? I have the basin in my sack all dinted, and I am taking it home to have it mended, to trim my beard in it, if, by God's grace, I am allowed to see my wife and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra



Words linked to "Addled" :   confused, stale



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