addled: [13] Addled may be traceable back ultimately to a confusion between ‘wind’ and ‘urine’ in Latin. In Middle English the term was adel eye ‘addled egg’. of which the first part derived from Old English adela ‘foul-smelling urine or liquid manure’. It seems possible that this may be a loan-translation of the Latin term for ‘addled egg’, ōvum ūrīnae, literally ‘urine egg’. This in turn was an alteration, by folk etymology, of ōvum ūrīnum, a partial loantranslation of Greek oúrion ōón, literally ‘wind egg’ (a wind egg is an imperfect or addled egg).
