• (British) IPA: /ˈmɛd.əl/, /ˈmɛdl̩/

meddle (meddles, present participle meddling; past and past participle meddled)

1. To interfere in or with; to concern oneself with unduly. [from 14^thc.]
   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981 ↗, 2 Kings 14:10 ↗:

     Why shouldest thou meddle to thy hurt?

   • 1689, John Locke, Two Treatises on Civil Government

     The civil lawyers […] have meddled in a matter that belongs not to them.

2. (obsolete) To interest or engage oneself; to have to do (with), in a good sense.
   • 1560, Geneva Bible, Thessalonians 4:11

     Study to be quiet, and to meddle with your own business.

3. (obsolete) To mix (something) with some other substance; to commingle, combine, blend. [14^th-17^thc.]
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.i:

     he cut a locke of all their heare, / Which medling with their bloud and earth, he threw / Into the graue […].

4. (intransitive, now US regional) To have sex. [from 14^thc.]
   • 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/MaloryWks2/1:19.5?rgn=div2;view=fulltext chapter v], in Le Morte Darthur, book XVII:

     But after god came to Adam and bad hym knowe his wyf flesshly as nature requyred / Soo lay Adam with his wyf vnder the same tree / and anone the tree whiche was whyte and ful grene as ony grasse and alle that came oute of hit / and in the same tyme that they medled to gyders there was Abel begoten / thus was the tree longe of grene colour

   • 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC 54573970 ↗, partition II, section 5, member 1, subsection v:

     Take a ram's head that never meddled with an ewe, cut off at a blow, and the horns only taken away, boil it well, skin and wool together […].

• (to interfere in or with) dabble, stick one's nose into, stick one's oar in
• (to mix) bemingle, combine, ming; see also Thesaurus:mix
• (to have sex) do it, get it on, ming; see also Thesaurus:copulate

• French: s'ingérer, se mêler
• German: einmischen
• Italian: immischiarsi
• Portuguese: intrometer
• Russian: вме́шиваться
• Spanish: entrometerse, inmiscuirse, injerirse, mangonear (colloquial)

• Russian: сме́шивать