murky

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English mirki,^[2] formed from Middle English mirk + -i, from the noun murk,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} later with the English suffix -y.^[3][7] The noun is from Old Norse myrkr (“darkness”),^[4][6][8] itself formed from the Norse adjective of the same form, meaning dark.^[8] The OED leaves open whether the related English adjective was borrowed from early Scandinavian or was a native cognate of Old Saxon mirki and of the Norse word, since Old English mirce (“dark”) would have had a different consonant;^[3] Hoad holds that the Middle English evidence points to Scandinavian origin.^[6] Further cognates are Danish mørk and Swedish mörk.^[8][3] Etymonline traces the Germanic word to Proto-Germanic *merkwjo-, and, after Watkins, perhaps to Proto-Indo-European *mer- (“to flicker”), the root of morn.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of a place, dark and gloomy: in Richard Rolle's Psalter, composed about 1340 and copied about 1590, translating Latin tenebrosis in "mirky stedes".^[2][3] Etymonline dates it to the mid 14th century, and notes that it was rare before the 17th century.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The older adjective was simply murk,^[4] and unlike murk, which was mostly confined to Scots in the 18th and early 19th centuries, murky stayed in general use.^[3] Shakespeare's Tempest has "the murkiest den" and Milton's Paradise Lost "the murky air", both quoted by Johnson (1755), who defined it as "dark; cloudy; wanting light".^[9] The OED dates the sense of air obscured by mist from Milton (1667).^[3] Later senses are "dirty, grimy" (1755), "dark in colour" (1759), "morally questionable, sinister" (1779), as in a murky past, and "obscure, confused" (1783).^[3] Since Poe (1840) it has also been used of cloudy water, and since 1874 of a blurred image or poorly recorded sound.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1340 – of a place, dark, gloomy.^[2][3]
• 1667 – of air, obscured by mist; foggy.^[3]
• 1755 – dirty, grimy.^[3]
• 1779 – shady, morally questionable.^[3]
• 1783 – obscure, confused.^[3]
• 1840 – of water, cloudy with suspended matter.^[3]
• 1874 – of a picture, blurred; of sound, poorly reproduced.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Dark and gloomy: They groped along the murky corridor.^[10][5][3]
2. Of water, cloudy or dirty with suspended matter: The pond was too murky to see the fish.^[3][5]
3. Thick with mist, smoke or fog: murky air.^[10][3]
4. Hard to understand; obscure or confused: the murky details of the deal.^[10][3]
5. Morally doubtful; shady or sinister: a politician with a murky past.^[3]

Word family

• murkily
• murkiness

Related words

• murk

Usage notes

A separate musical term murky, a keyboard piece with a bass in broken octaves, recorded in English from 1876, is from German Murki, said to have been coined about 1720 by the composer Seedo; its further origin is unknown.^[3][10]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster