muddle through
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English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From muddle (“to think and act in a confused, aimless way”) + through.
Pronunciation
[edit]- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈmʌdl̩
θ ɹuː/ - (General American) IPA(key): /ˈmʌd(ə)l
θ ɹu/ - Hyphenation: mud‧dle through
Verb
[edit]muddle through (third-person singular simple present muddles through, present participle muddling through, simple past and past participle muddled through)
- (transitive, intransitive) To succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained.
- Synonyms: get along, get by, make do, (Britain) muddle along, scrape along, scrape by
- I’ve only had a few lessons, but I can muddle through the test.
- 1943 (date written), “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, in Ralph Blane (lyrics), Hugh Martin (music), Meet Me in St. Louis (soundtrack; 1944), performed by Judy Garland:
- Someday soon we all will be together / If the fates allow. / Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow. / So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.
- 2023 March 8, Christian Wolmar, “Labour passes up the chance to deliver a forceful rail policy”, in RAIL, number 978, page 34:
- If Labour's senior team thinks that it can just muddle through to the next election without a coherent plan about how to tackle the problems of the industry, it is making a big mistake.
Translations
[edit]to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained
Further reading
[edit]- “to muddle through” under “muddle, v.”, in OED Online
, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, June 2021.
- “muddle through, phrasal v.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
Categories:
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *myewh₁-
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *mewH-
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English lemmas
- English verbs
- English phrasal verbs
- English phrasal verbs formed with "through"
- English multiword terms
- English transitive verbs
- English intransitive verbs
- English terms with usage examples
- English terms with quotations