the.com/muddle
the glorious art of crushing mint until your problems briefly stop mattering
means To muddle is to mix things up into a confused, jumbled mess — or, in a cocktail, to press fruit and herbs to release their flavour.
from Likely from Middle Dutch 'moddelen,' meaning to make water muddy, a frequentative cousin of 'mud' itself. The sense traveled naturally: from literally stirring up murky water to figuratively stirring up confused thoughts. The bartending sense — crushing mint and sugar in the bottom of a glass — is a later, much happier application of the same muddying instinct.
- bar origin
- Named for the muddler, a bartender's tiny wooden club
- old meaning
- Once meant to wallow in mud like livestock
- mojito engine
- Without it, mojitos are just sad limeade
- mental cousin
- To muddle through means surviving without a clue
for instance
brexit negotiations — uk and eu spent 2016-2020 in confused, contradictory talks producing the northern ireland protocol mess