it means Stupid or foollish. Politics are so addlepated these days I’ve switch it off.

In Middle English an adel eye was a putrid egg. The stench of such an egg apparently affected the minds of some witty thinkers, who hatched a comparison between the diminished, unsound quality of an adel (or addle) egg and an empty, confused head-or pate. “Your owne imagination, which was no lesse Idle, then your head was addle all that day,” wrote one 17th-century wit at play with the words idle and addle. Today, addle is often found in combination with words referring to one’s noggin, as in addlepated, addlebrained, and addle-headed.

Example

Buyer is addlepated so much as who he can not buy a right ticket!

Synonyms

• addle,
• addled,
• bedeviled,
• befogged,
• befuddled,
• bemused,
• bewildered,
• bushed
• [chiefly Australian],
• confounded,
• confused,
• dazed,
• distracted,
• dizzy,
• dopey
• (also dopy),
• fogged,
• mixed-up,
• muddleheaded,
• muzzy,
• pixilated
• (also pixillated),
• punch-drunk,
• punchy,
• raddled,
• shell-shocked,
• silly,
• slaphappy,
• spaced-out
• (or spaced),
• spacey
• (also spacy),
• stunned,
• stupefied,
• zonked,
• zonked-out

Antonyms

• clearheaded