Stir the water

Yeardley Smith, host of the true crime podcast “Small Town Dicks”, was referring to a crime victim’s unwillingness to confront her boyfriend and that “she didn’t want to stir the water.” This is a nice mashup of “stir the pot” (exacerbate a tense or otherwise difficult situation) and “muddy the water(s)” (introduce something, usually information, that makes a situation less clear). Pots usually contain water, and we often stir them, so the speaker may have had that image in her mind. By the way, Ms. Smith is also known as the voice of Lisa Simpson on the great tv show “The Simpsons”.

A big shout out to Vicki Ameel Kovacs for hearing this one.