"muddle through" meaning in English

See muddle through in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

IPA: /ˈmʌdl̩ θɹuː/ [Received-Pronunciation], /ˈmʌd(ə)l θɹu/ [General-American] Forms: muddles through [present, singular, third-person], muddling through [participle, present], muddled through [participle, past], muddled through [past]
Etymology: From muddle (“to think and act in a confused, aimless way”) + through. Etymology templates: {{root|en|ine-pro|*myewh₁-|*mewH-}}, {{m|en|muddle|t=to think and act in a confused, aimless way}} muddle (“to think and act in a confused, aimless way”), {{m|en|through}} through Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} muddle through (third-person singular simple present muddles through, present participle muddling through, simple past and past participle muddled through)
  1. (transitive, intransitive) To succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained. Tags: intransitive, transitive Synonyms: get along, get by, make do, muddle along [Britain], scrape along, scrape by Translations (to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained): 應付過去 (Chinese Mandarin), 应付过去 (yìngfuguòqu) (Chinese Mandarin), 勉強勝任 (Chinese Mandarin), 勉强胜任 (miǎnqiǎngshèngrèn) (Chinese Mandarin), selvitä jotenkin (Finnish), pärjätä jotenkin (Finnish), rämpiä läpi (Finnish), sich durchwursteln (German), နကဵုထုဲထံၚ် (Mon)
    Sense id: en-muddle_through-en-verb--VFssfIb Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English phrasal verbs with particle (through)

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for muddle through meaning in English (4.5kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "ine-pro",
        "3": "*myewh₁-",
        "4": "*mewH-"
      },
      "expansion": "",
      "name": "root"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "muddle",
        "t": "to think and act in a confused, aimless way"
      },
      "expansion": "muddle (“to think and act in a confused, aimless way”)",
      "name": "m"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "through"
      },
      "expansion": "through",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From muddle (“to think and act in a confused, aimless way”) + through.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "muddles through",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "muddling through",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "muddled through",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "muddled through",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "muddle through (third-person singular simple present muddles through, present participle muddling through, simple past and past participle muddled through)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "hyphenation": [
    "mud‧dle"
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English phrasal verbs with particle (through)",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I’ve only had a few lessons, but I can muddle through the test.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "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",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 March 8, Christian Wolmar, “Labour passes up the chance to deliver a forceful rail policy”, in RAIL, number 978, page 34",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained."
      ],
      "id": "en-muddle_through-en-verb--VFssfIb",
      "links": [
        [
          "transitive",
          "transitive"
        ],
        [
          "intransitive",
          "intransitive"
        ],
        [
          "succeed",
          "succeed"
        ],
        [
          "clumsily",
          "clumsily"
        ],
        [
          "ill-equipped",
          "ill-equipped"
        ],
        [
          "inadequately",
          "inadequately"
        ],
        [
          "trained",
          "train#Verb"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(transitive, intransitive) To succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "get along"
        },
        {
          "word": "get by"
        },
        {
          "word": "make do"
        },
        {
          "tags": [
            "Britain"
          ],
          "word": "muddle along"
        },
        {
          "word": "scrape along"
        },
        {
          "word": "scrape by"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "intransitive",
        "transitive"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "sense": "to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained",
          "word": "應付過去"
        },
        {
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "roman": "yìngfuguòqu",
          "sense": "to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained",
          "word": "应付过去"
        },
        {
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "sense": "to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained",
          "word": "勉強勝任"
        },
        {
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "roman": "miǎnqiǎngshèngrèn",
          "sense": "to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained",
          "word": "勉强胜任"
        },
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained",
          "word": "selvitä jotenkin"
        },
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained",
          "word": "pärjätä jotenkin"
        },
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained",
          "word": "rämpiä läpi"
        },
        {
          "code": "de",
          "lang": "German",
          "sense": "to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained",
          "word": "sich durchwursteln"
        },
        {
          "code": "mnw",
          "lang": "Mon",
          "sense": "to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained",
          "word": "နကဵုထုဲထံၚ်"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈmʌdl̩ θɹuː/",
      "tags": [
        "Received-Pronunciation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈmʌd(ə)l θɹu/",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "muddle through"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "ine-pro",
        "3": "*myewh₁-",
        "4": "*mewH-"
      },
      "expansion": "",
      "name": "root"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "muddle",
        "t": "to think and act in a confused, aimless way"
      },
      "expansion": "muddle (“to think and act in a confused, aimless way”)",
      "name": "m"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "through"
      },
      "expansion": "through",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From muddle (“to think and act in a confused, aimless way”) + through.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "muddles through",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "muddling through",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "muddled through",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "muddled through",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "muddle through (third-person singular simple present muddles through, present participle muddling through, simple past and past participle muddled through)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "hyphenation": [
    "mud‧dle"
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English intransitive verbs",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrasal verbs",
        "English phrasal verbs with particle (through)",
        "English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European",
        "English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *mewH-",
        "English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *myewh₁-",
        "English terms with IPA pronunciation",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English transitive verbs",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I’ve only had a few lessons, but I can muddle through the test.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "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",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 March 8, Christian Wolmar, “Labour passes up the chance to deliver a forceful rail policy”, in RAIL, number 978, page 34",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "transitive",
          "transitive"
        ],
        [
          "intransitive",
          "intransitive"
        ],
        [
          "succeed",
          "succeed"
        ],
        [
          "clumsily",
          "clumsily"
        ],
        [
          "ill-equipped",
          "ill-equipped"
        ],
        [
          "inadequately",
          "inadequately"
        ],
        [
          "trained",
          "train#Verb"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(transitive, intransitive) To succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "get along"
        },
        {
          "word": "get by"
        },
        {
          "word": "make do"
        },
        {
          "tags": [
            "Britain"
          ],
          "word": "muddle along"
        },
        {
          "word": "scrape along"
        },
        {
          "word": "scrape by"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "intransitive",
        "transitive"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈmʌdl̩ θɹuː/",
      "tags": [
        "Received-Pronunciation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈmʌd(ə)l θɹu/",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "sense": "to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained",
      "word": "應付過去"
    },
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "roman": "yìngfuguòqu",
      "sense": "to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained",
      "word": "应付过去"
    },
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "sense": "to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained",
      "word": "勉強勝任"
    },
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "roman": "miǎnqiǎngshèngrèn",
      "sense": "to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained",
      "word": "勉强胜任"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained",
      "word": "selvitä jotenkin"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained",
      "word": "pärjätä jotenkin"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained",
      "word": "rämpiä läpi"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained",
      "word": "sich durchwursteln"
    },
    {
      "code": "mnw",
      "lang": "Mon",
      "sense": "to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained",
      "word": "နကဵုထုဲထံၚ်"
    }
  ],
  "word": "muddle through"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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