meddle

From Anglo-Norman medler, variant of Anglo-Norman and Old French mesler, meller, from Vulgar Latin *misculō, from Latin misceō (“to mix”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈmɛd.əl/, /ˈmɛdl̩/

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -ɛdəl
• Homophones: medal, metal, mettle (in accents with flapping)

meddle (third-person singular simple present meddles, present participle meddling, simple past and past participle meddled)

1. To interfere in or with; to concern oneself with unduly. [from 14^thc.]
   • Bible, 2 Kings xiv.10:

     Why shouldst thou meddle to thy hurt?

   • John Locke

     The civil lawyers […] have meddled in a matter that belongs not to them.

   • 2017 January 14, “Thailand's new king rejects the army's proposed constitution”, in The Economist‎:

     There is much to dislike about the proposed constitution, which will keep elected governments beholden to a senate nominated by the junta and to a suite of meddling committees.

2. (obsolete) To interest or engage oneself; to have to do (with), in a good sense.
   • Tyndale

     Study to be quiet, and to meddle with your own business.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Barrow to this entry?)

3. (obsolete) To mix (something) with some other substance; to commingle, combine, blend. [14^th-17^thc.]
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.i:

     he cut a locke of all their heare, / Which medling with their bloud and earth, he threw / Into the graue […].

4. (intransitive, now US regional) To have sex. [from 14^thc.]
   • 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter v, in Le Morte Darthur, book XVII:

     But after god came to Adam and bad hym knowe his wyf flesshly as nature requyred / Soo lay Adam with his wyf vnder the same tree / and anone the tree whiche was whyte and ful grene as ony grasse and alle that came oute of hit / and in the same tyme that they medled to gyders there was Abel begoten / thus was the tree longe of grene colour

   • 1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford: Printed by Iohn Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC 216894069; The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd corrected and augmented edition, Oxford: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, 1624, OCLC 54573970, partition II, section 5, member 1, subsection v:

     Take a ram's head that never meddled with an ewe, cut off at a blow, and the horns only taken away, boil it well, skin and wool together […].

• meddle and make
• meddlement
• meddlesome
• meddler

• melded