intermeddle
Pronunciation
  • (British) IPA: /ˌɪntəˈmɛd(ə)l/
  • (America) IPA: /ˌɪntɚˈmɛdəl/
Verb

intermeddle (intermeddles, present participle intermeddling; past and past participle intermeddled)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To mix, mingle together. [14th-18thc.]
    • 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/MaloryWks2/1:19.15?rgn=div2;view=fulltext chapter xv], in Le Morte Darthur, book XVII:
      Ryghte soo entryd he in to the chamber and cam toward the table of syluer / and whanne he came nyghe he felte a brethe that hym thoughte hit was entremedled with fyre whiche smote hym so sore in the vysage that hym thoughte it brente vysage / and there with he felle to the erthe and had no power to aryse
  2. (obsolete, reflexive) To get mixed up (with). [15th-17thc.]
    • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 29, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes, […], book II, printed at London: By Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], OCLC 946730821 ↗:
      Amongst our other disputation, that of Fatum, hath much entermedled it selfe […].
  3. (intransitive) To butt in, to interfere in or with. [from 15thc.]
    • 1623, Francis Bacon, A Discourse of a War with Spain
      The practice of Spain hath been, […] by war.. and […] by conditions of treaty, to intermeddle with foreign states.
    • 1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Book I, Ch.2:
      I must desire all those critics to mind their own business, and not to intermeddle with affairs or works which no ways concern them; for till they produce the authority by which they are constituted judges, I shall not plead to their jurisdiction.
Synonyms


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