muddlesome

English

Etymology

muddle +‎ -some

Adjective

muddlesome (comparative more muddlesome, superlative most muddlesome)

1. Characterised or marked by muddling; confusing, lacking in order; tending to muddle.
   • 1945, Lawrence Wolfe, The Reilly Plan: A New Way of Life, London: Nicholson & Watson, cited by George Orwell in a review published in Tribune, 25 January, 1946, in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume IV, London: Secker & Warburg, 1968, p. 91,

     […] the abolition of the muddlesome, costly and wasteful apparatus of the kitchen

   • 1952, C. S. Lewis, chapter 10, in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Collins, published 1998:

     Lucy peered at the pictures with her face close to the page, and though they had seemed crowded and muddlesome before, she found she could now see them quite clearly.

   • 1966, Alan Watts, chapter 5, in The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, New York: Vintage, published 1989, page 116:

     Without this, all social concern will be muddlesome meddling, and all work for the future will be planned disaster.