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muddy the waters

Confuse the issue, as in Bringing up one irrelevant fact after another, he succeeded in muddying the waters. This metaphoric expression, alluding to making a pond or stream turbid by stirring up mud from the bottom, was first recorded in 1837.

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Example Sentences

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Asked if Africa had a good case to provide the next Pope based on the Church's growth on the continent, he said he felt the Pope shouldn't be chosen based on statistics, because "those types of considerations tend to muddy the waters".

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A person's actions, however, can often have some plausible ambiguity that bad faith actors can exploit to muddy the waters.

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been known to use administrative warrants to muddy the waters around Fourth Amendment protections.

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No need to muddy the waters, no need to create alternative facts.

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And now, at the eleventh hour, a shadowy group is barging in to muddy the waters even further.

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muddy mud eel

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