addle

From Word of the Day:

addle \AD-'l\, verb:
1. to make or become muddled or confused
2. to make or become rotten or putrid

---

I never had known the second meaning of the word. I remember the first time I ever heard the word used; my grandparents used to come out and help in our garden and my grandmother always wore a bonnet. I asked her why and she told me she didn't want to addle her brain.

If you've ever spent any time in the Texas Panhandle, particularly in the summer months, you'll know what addle means if you don't keep your head covered.

Well, you won't know it at the TIME because you'll be addled, but you know what I mean. Well, unless you're addled right now....

Dictionary.com says more about the alternate meaning, very interesting, very disgusting:

by 1712, from addle (n.) "urine, liquid filth," from Old English adela "mud, mire, liquid manure" (cognate with Old Swedish adel "urine," Middle Low German adel, Dutch aal "puddle"). Used in noun phrase addle egg (c.1250) "egg that does not hatch, rotten egg," literally "urine egg," a loan translation of Latin ovum urinum, which is itself an erroneous loan translation of Greek ourion oon "putrid egg," literally "wind egg," from ourios "of the wind" (confused by Roman writers with ourios "of urine," from ouron "urine"). Because of this usage, the noun in English was taken as an adjective from c. 1600, meaning "putrid," and thence given a figurative extension to "empty, vain, idle," also "confused, muddled, unsound" (1706). The verb followed.