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What is the difference between the verbs admix and shuffle?

I'm not a native speaker, and in the case shown in the image below, I'd rather use shuffle.

enter image description here

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    Have you checked a dictionary?
    – user20934
    Jun 28, 2012 at 11:03
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    @rudra - yep. moreover, you can answer in that manner about literally every question tagged [word-choice] and [vocabulary] ))))
    – shabunc
    Jun 28, 2012 at 13:19
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    @shabunc actually no, there is a really good way to make sure that is NOT the case. The asker reads the dictionary, and presents what they have found in their question, and also why they don't understand the dictionary's definition.
    – Matt E. Эллен
    Jun 28, 2012 at 13:26
  • @Matt I can provide tens of questions like that upvoted, moreover you can see such questions in right column right here )))
    – shabunc
    Jun 28, 2012 at 13:33
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    @shabunc. I think Matt is giving very some helpful advice. When an O.P. pastes a dictionary definition into the question, it removes all doubt, and the question is usually more well-received. Sure, we can both probably find examples with and without such background info, some upvoted and some downvoted, but this generality will hold: the more info you include about what research you've already done, the more people will be willing to work on answering your question, instead of wondering - or asking outright - if you've done any preliminary research of your own. It's a good tip.
    – J.R.
    Jun 28, 2012 at 14:00

3 Answers 3

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This is an odd use of admix and I agree that shuffle might have been more descriptive. Admix has the sense of mixing one thing with another, or adding an additional element. For example, the New York Times in 2006 reported that ‘They admixed idealism and realism in drafting the United Nations Charter.’

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I don't recall ever hearing the word admix before. I just looked it up on my computer's built-in dictionary (NOAD), and its labeled as chiefly technical.

I think it's a rather rare word, and I'd guess that the game's designer may have been using it as a novelty term, or else they happened to find it in a thesaurus, and were not aware of its obscurity.

More everyday terms you could use would include shuffle, scramble, jumble, or, quite simply, mix. (I'd recommend either shuffle or scramble).

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Admix: mix something with something else.

  • Sean Parker has assembled a rainbow cabinet consisting of leftwing radicals and former military men, admixed with orthodox economists.

  • The typical civilized Indonesian peoples, Malays and Javanese, are variants of a proto-malay race with Indian, Arab and other foreign admixtures.

Shuffle has many different meanings, but the one which should be used here is:

Shuffle: To mix playing cards, tiles, dominoes, etc. together so as to make their order random.

For your image, shuffle would be used. For admixing, you need more than one object/ingredient.

PS- Just like J.R., I think even I haven't heard it before.

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