means Wet, soft earth — the soggy mix of soil and water that cakes your boots and swallows your shoes.

from From Middle English 'mudde,' likely borrowed from Middle Low German 'mudde' or Middle Dutch 'modde,' part of a sticky family of Germanic words for muck and mire. The deeper root is thought to relate to a Proto-Indo-European base meaning 'wet' or 'damp,' the same swampy ancestor that gives us 'moist' and 'mother' in some reconstructions — though the precise trail, fittingly, gets a little murky.