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muddy
muddy something up
Lit. 1. to make water muddy; to stir up the mud in water, as at the bottom of a pond or river. Don't muddy the water up. It will clog our filters. Don't muddy up the water.
2. Fig. to make something unclear. You have really muddied this issue up. I thought I understood it. You sure muddied up this issue.
muddy the water
Fig. to make something less clear; to make matters confusing; to create difficulty where there was none before. Things were going along quite smoothly until you came along and muddied the water. The events of the past month have muddied the water as far as our proposed joint venture is concerned.
muddy the waters
to make a situation more confusing
He's just trying to muddy the waters so we won't notice all the bad things he's done. Usage notes: sometimes used with a modifier: The controversy has muddied the social waters of communities throughout this region.
muddy the waters
to make a situation more confused and less easy to understand or deal with The statistics you quoted didn't prove anything, they simply muddied the waters.
muddy the waters
Confuse the issue, as in Bringing up one irrelevant fact after another, he succeeded in muddying the waters. This metaphoric expression, alluding to making a pond or stream turbid by stirring up mud from the bottom, was first recorded in 1837.