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Green’s Dictionary of Slang

muffin-worry n.

also muffin-fight

[ety. unknown]

1. an evening party .

1855		Sussex Advertiser 9 Jan. 3/1: A dance in the evening or a quiet ‘muffin worry’ terminates the day’s proceedings.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.

2. an old ladies’ tea-party.

1859		Chester Chron. 29 Jan. 2/3: By all means [...] frequent the tea-fight and come out strong at the muffin-worry.
1864		Derby Day 15: There are men who do not disdain muffin-worries and crumpet-scrambles.
1873		‘Cuthbert Bede’ Little Mr. Bouncer 14: You look as if you had been at a tea-fight or muffin-worry and had taken more hot toast than was good for your digestion.
1884		Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday 31 May 35/2: [headline] Muffin Worry.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 25 Apr. 14/3: Dear Discord, thou cans’t well recite / The details of each muffin fight; […] / Dwell on the themes that are thine own, / But leave the world of war alone.
1889		Dead Bird (Sydney) 14 Sept. 4/4: The parsons [...] charged up the steps as if pushing to a muffin-worry .
1890		Sporting Times 11 Jan. 1: She was a very demure little nun-like person, and she encountered the Recloose at a religious muffin-worry.
1898		Hull Dly Mail 2 June 2/5: At five o’clock everybody was making ready for the ‘muffin-worry’.
1926		Wood & Goddard Dict. Amer. Sl. 56: tea-fight. Tea-party, muffin-worry.
[2007		S. Maloney Sucked In 39: A buffet laden with coffee dregs and muffin carnage].

In derivatives

muffin-worrier (n.)

(Aus.) one who attends a tea party (and by implication dislikes alcohol).

1880		Sydney Mail 1 May 825/4: I see him stand the observed of all as chief muffin-worrier in one of those scenes of wild reckless festivity in that teapot-like mansion, the Temperance Hall.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 15 Aug. 7/1: If these whey-blooded petitioners [i.e. preachers] have their way, no man will be able to take his ease in his inn without running the risk of being hustled off to the gaol or the lunatic asylum, and the tea-fighter and muffin-worrier will reign alone in the land.