addle

Having lost the power of development, and become rotten; putrid.

addle eggs

Pan. Troilus! Why, he esteems her no more than I esteem an addle egg. Cres. If you love an addle egg as well as you love an idle head, you would eat chickens i' the shell.

Unfruitful or confused; muddled.

addle brains

Thus far the Poet, but his brains grow Addle; / And all the reſt is purely from this Noddle.

Liquid filth; mire.

To make or become addled; to muddle or confuse.

to addle someone's brain

The same female bard—descended, possibly, from those terrible old Scalds who seem to have existed for the express purpose of addling the brains of mankind when they begin to investigate languages—made a standing pretence which greatly assisted in forcing me back to a number of hideous places that I would by all means have avoided.

To cause fertilised eggs to lose viability, by killing the developing embryo within through shaking, piercing, freezing or oiling, without breaking the shell.

Their eggs were addled.

The term shocking or addling trout and salmon eggs is applied to the process of turning the infertile eggs white so they can be separated from the fertile ones. Actually, this amounts to nothing more than agitating the eggs enough to rupture the yolk membrane in the infertile eggs, which causes them to turn white.