muddle through

English

WOTD – 24 December 2021

Etymology

From muddle (“to think and act in a confused, aimless way”) + through.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈmʌdl̩ θɹuː/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈmʌd(ə)l θɹu/
• Hyphenation: mud‧dle through

Verb

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

1. (ambitransitive) 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.

   • 1984 December 17, Antony Jay, Jonathan Lynn, “Party Games (Yes Minister)”, in Yes Minister, spoken by Humphrey Appleby (Nigel Hawthorne):

     Well one is a little anxious, one is always wary of the unknown, but I have faith somehow I'll muddle through.

   • 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

to succeed (often clumsily) despite being ill-equipped or inadequately trained — see also get by

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 應付過去 / 应付过去 (yìngfuguòqu), 勉強勝任 / 勉强胜任 (miǎnqiǎngshèngrèn)

• Finnish: selvitä jotenkin, pärjätä jotenkin, rämpiä läpi
• German: sich durchwursteln
• Mon: နကဵုထုဲထံၚ်

Further reading

• “to muddle through” under “muddle, v.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, June 2021.
• “muddle through, phrasal v.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.