muddle along

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Verb

muddle along (third-person singular simple present muddles along, present participle muddling along, simple past and past participle muddled along)

1. (intransitive, idiomatic) To live or work in an unorganized and unplanned way.

   Synonym: (Britain, dialectal) muggle

   • 1940, unnamed executive quoted in United States. Temporary National Economic Committee, Investigation of concentration of economic power, U.S. Government Printing Office, page 66

     Executives are content to muddle along as long as profits are satisfactory — Attention to operating matters is a child of adversity.

   • 1982, Michael Schudson, The Power of News, Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 170:

     Indeed, they may muddle along a little better, armed with the view that the world is subject to their control.

   • 2000, Angela Stent, Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, the Soviet Collapse, and the New Europe, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 238:

     But evidence from the past few years indicates that Russia will continue to muddle along and that, in a few years, it will probably “muddle upward”.