Word of the week

• muckle, mickle adj. large in size, big, great; full-grown; of high rank
• Bummler n. a blundering person, a bungler.

Words by month

• Dec 2008
• Nov 2008
• Oct 2008
• Sep 2008
• Aug 2008
• Jul 2008
• Jun 2008
• May 2008
• Apr 2008
• Mar 2008
• Feb 2008
• Jan 2008
• Dec 2007
• Nov 2007
• Oct 2007
• Sep 2007
• Aug 2007
• Jul 2007
• Jun 2007
• May 2007
• Apr 2007
• Mar 2007
• Feb 2007
• Jan 2007
• Dec 2006
• Nov 2006
• Oct 2006
• Sep 2006
• Aug 2006
• Jul 2006
• Jun 2006
• May 2006
• Apr 2006
• Mar 2006
• Feb 2006
• Jan 2006

Sponsored by

Supporters of

muckle, mickle adj. large in size, big, great; full-grown; of high rank

“muckle, mickle adj. large in size, big, great; full-grown; of high rank”

20th December 2007

Muckle is known to many in the expression ‘mony a mickle maks a muckle’, but given that mickle and muckle are actually different forms of the same word, there are some problems with this phrase. The current received wisdom is that original phrase was probably ‘mony a pickle (a small amount) maks a muckle’, but somehow mickle was substituted for pickle, as though mickle and muckle were opposites.

Oddly enough, the earliest known evidence for the phrase comes from the writings of US president George Washington. Writing in 1793, he remarked on the ‘Scotch addage, than which nothing in nature is more true "that many mickles make a muckle"’. The comparable phrase ‘many a little makes a mickle’, still known in some regional dialects in England, first appears in print in a list of proverbs ‘of the English nation’ in an early seventeenth-century work by William Camden on Britain and its inhabitants.

Muckle is derived from Old English micel and its Old Norse cousin mikill, and is in current use in various parts of the British Isles. In Scots it appears in all different contexts. Old Scots had the term muckledom, meaning ‘bulk’ or ‘size’. A muckle-boukit person has an imposing frame, a muckle coat will keep you warm in the winter and the fish called the Greater Weever is also known as the Muckle Stanger, because of its poisonous spines. The Muckle Toun is Langholm in Dumfriesshire, and Hugh MacDiarmid frequently referred to it by this name in poems such as The Oon Olympian (1932): ‘And I am richt in ga’en back In like wise to the Muckle Toon’. Whaurever yer gaun ower the festive season, caw canny, an mind that mony a pickle (or puckle) maks a muckle (or mickle). Try sayin that efter a few wee haufs.