mud
pronunciation
How to pronounce mud in British English:
UK [mʌd]
How to pronounce mud in American English:
US [mʌd]
-
- Noun:
- water soaked soil; soft wet earth
- slanderous remarks or charges
-
- Verb:
- soil with mud, muck, or mire
- plaster with mud
Word Origin
- mud
- mud: [14] The Old English word for ‘mud’ was fen, which now survives only in the sense ‘swamp’. It was replaced in the Middle English period by mud, probably a borrowing from Middle Low German mudde. This goes back ultimately to a prehistoric base *meu-, *mu- that has produced a range of words in the Indo- European languages denoting ‘dirt’ or ‘wet’: Greek múdos ‘damp’, for instance, and Polish muł ‘slime’. Muddle [17] may come from Middle Dutch moddelen ‘make muddy’, a derivative of modde ‘mud’.
- mud (n.)
- mid-14c., cognate with and probably from Middle Low German mudde, Middle Dutch modde "thick mud," from Proto-Germanic *mud- from PIE *(s)meu-/*mu- [Buck], found in many words denoting "wet" or "dirty" (cognates: Greek mydos "damp, moisture," Old Irish muad "cloud," Polish muł "slime," Sanskrit mutra- "urine," Avestan muthra- "excrement, filth"); related to German Schmutz "dirt," which also is used for "mud" in roads, etc., to avoid dreck, which originally meant "excrement." Welsh mwd is from English. Replaced native fen. Meaning "lowest or worst of anything" is from 1580s. As a word for "coffee," it is hobo slang from 1925; as a word for "opium" from 1922. To throw or hurl mud "make disgraceful accusations" is from 1762. To say (one's) name is mud and mean "(one) is discredited" is first recorded 1823, from mud in obsolete sense of "a stupid twaddling fellow" (1708). Mud in your eye as a toast recorded from 1912, American English. Mud puppy "salamander" is from 1889, American English; mud bath is from 1798; mud pie is from 1788.
Example
- 1. It is from this sloughed-off land that the mud volcanoes form .
- 2. Other scripps oceanographic collections include invertebrates , mud cores and rocks .
- 3. Mud holds down any gas that leaks into the well .
- 4. Back in the lab , they cultured microbes from that mud .
- 5. Men stand in line , sending mud up to the embankment .