"dark, obscure, gloomy," mid-14c., from murk + -y (2). Rare before 17c. The older adjective was simply murk. Related: Murkily; murkiness.
Entries linking to murky
murk n.
"gloom, darkness," c. 1300, myrke, from Old Norse myrkr "darkness," from Proto-Germanic *merkwjo- (source also of Old English mirce "murky, black, dark;" as a noun, "murkiness, darkness," Danish mǿrk "darkness," Old Saxon mirki "dark"); perhaps cognate with Old Church Slavonic mraku, Serbo-Croatian mrak, Russian mrak "darkness;" Lithuanian merkti "shut the eyes, blink," from PIE *mer- "to flicker" (see morn). In Middle English also as an adjective (c. 1300, from Old Norse) and a verb. Sometimes spelled mirk, especially in Scotland. Mirk Monday was long the name in Scotland for the great solar eclipse of March 29, 1652 (April 8, New Style).
-y 2
adjective suffix, "full of or characterized by," from Old English -ig, from Proto-Germanic *-iga- (source also of Dutch, Danish, German -ig, Gothic -egs), from PIE -(i)ko-, adjectival suffix, cognate with elements in Greek -ikos, Latin -icus (see -ic). Originally added to nouns in Old English; used from 13c. with verbs, and by 15c. even with other adjectives (for example crispy). Adjectives such as hugy, vasty are artificial words that exist for the sake of poetical metrics.