Other forms: muds
Mud is wet, sticky earth. Covered in mud, a mud track, the field was thick with mud after the rain.
It is uncountable and it takes no article. From the physical stuff come a small set of vivid idioms about reputation: drag somebody's name through the mud, sling mud, and mud sticks, meaning an accusation is remembered even after it is disproved. Note muddy, both adjective and verb — to muddy the waters is to make something less clear on purpose — and mudslinging, which is what political campaigns are accused of every four years.
1nounmudWet, soft earth.
“The path was six inches of mud after the storm.”
2noundamageDamage to somebody's reputation, in figurative use.
“By the time it was disproved the mud had stuck.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
mud is wet earth.
Mud came into English from Low German or Middle Dutch, and it has no Old English ancestor. That is common for words about the ordinary physical world in the north of England: the trading languages of the North Sea supplied a good deal of everyday vocabulary.
Proto-Indo-European
*mū-
Proto-Germanic
*mud-
Middle Low German
mudde
Middle Dutch
mod
Middle English
mud
English, today
mud
Built from
From Middle English mud, mudde, mode, probably a borrowing from Middle Dutch mod, modde or Middle Low German mudde, ultimately from Proto-Germanic mud-, mudra- (“mud”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European mū-, mew- (“moist”). Cognate with stq Mudde (“mud”), Middle High German mot (“mud”), Swedish modd (“slush”). Compare also suffixed variants English mother#Etymology 3 (“vinegar-forming sediment in alcohol”), West Frisian modder (“mud”), Dutch modder (“mud”), German Low German Mudder (“mud”), German Moder (“moldiness, mildew, decay”), Danish mudder (“mud”). Alternative etymology suggests the Proto-Germanic word is possibly borrowed from a urj language (compare e.g. Finnish muta (“mud”), se mođđi (“mud”), myv мода (“earth, ground”) from urj-pro muďa (“earth”)).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA