Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also mulliegrums) a feeling of unease, not an illness that can be diagnosed, but a general sense of not being fully well.

1599		Nashe Praise of the Red Herring 55: Peters successour was so in his mulliegrums that he had thought to haue buffeted him, and cursed him with bell book & candle.
1605		Marston Dutch Curtezan II i: Let the Mulligrubs beware the knave!
1672		J. Phillips Maronides (1678) VI 73: Evadne all in Mulligrubs / For her spruce Ushers gingombobbs.
1680		M. Stevenson Wits Paraphras’d 155: I’m sick I think oth’ Mulligraubs, / Eating chopt Hay with Sillabubs.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Mulligrubs or Mumps, a Counterfeit Fit of the Sullens.
1725		New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1733		Laugh and Be Fat 91: Telling them their Country Physicians were all Fools, and that the Judge was only troubled with the Mulligrubs.
1748		Dyche & Pardon New General Eng. Dict. (5th edn) n.p.: Mulligrubs (S.) a pretended or counterfeit sullenness, a resolute, and fixed, and artificial displeasure, in order to gain some point desired [F&H].
1772		Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 413: I [...] find myself so plaguy queer, / I’m neither easy here nor there, / But dying with the mullygrubs.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Mulligrubs, sick of the mulligrubs, with eating chopped hay, low spirited, an imaginary sickness.
1797		Bridges Burlesque Homer (4th edn) I 353: He us’d to maul these Grecian scrubs, / But now he’s got the mully grubs.
1811		A. Scott Poems 19: Waes me, the mulligumphs she’s ta’en An’ toss’d him wi’ a vengeful wap Frae out her silk-saft downy lap .
1823		‘Jon Bee’ Dict. of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, etc.
1830		Freeman’s Jrnl 8 Sept. 4/3: The quack long’s rubbing mixture seems to have been a panacea — [...] ringworm, gout, mulligrubs, blue devils — it cured all.
1833		Satirist (London) 3 Feb. 459/3: The Baroness Rothschild ‘protested against iches—dey made her bowel cold, and gave her de mulligubs’.
1846		Worcs. Chron. 23 Sept. 8/4: Pooh! nonsense, man; it’s nothing but the mulligrubs.
1850		Life in Boston & N.Y. (Boston, MA) 6 Apr. n.p.: His laziness will cause his death / By mulligrubs or gout.
1853		‘Cuthbert Bede’ Adventures of Mr Verdant Green (1982) I 84: Peakyish you feel, don’t you now, with a touch of the mulligrubs in your collywobbles.
1866		Pall Mall Gaz. 1 Feb. 9/1: I am plagued with the blues [...] I am quite eat up with the mulligrubs.
1868		G.W. Harris ‘Sut Lovingoods Allegory’ Knoxville Daily Press and Messenger III 17 Sept. in Inge (1967) 312: He know’d no more about hit than the rulin’ politicians ove our day know ove statemanship, or the doctors ove mullygrubs in the brain.
1873		Sl. Dict. 227: Mollygrubs, or mulligrubs stomach ache, or sorrow ? which to the costermonger is much the same, as he believes, like the ancients, that the viscera is the seat of all feeling. Costermongers are not alone, even in the present day, in this belief.
1876		Arizona Sentinel (Yuma) 11 Mar. 3/2: The Editor is not well. He has the fan-tods, mully-grubs, [...] neuralgia, oldragia, or something else.
1887		W.E. Henley ‘Villon’s Good-Night’ in Farmer Musa Pedestris (1896) 175: And gave me mumps and mulligrubs / With skilly and swill that made me clam.
1895		H.B. Marriott-Watson in New Rev. July 6: But what’s gone is gone, and to curl up with the mullygrubs because the milk is a trifle sour, is neither to your credit nor to mine [F&H].
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 51: Mulligrubs [...] sorrow.
1909		L.W. Payne Jr ‘Word-List From East Alabama’ in DN III:v 351: mulligrubs, n. A fit of bad humor, the blues.
1915		M.G. Hayden ‘Terms Of Disparagement’ in DN IV:iii 222: mulligrubs, to have the, to be ill-humored. ‘You must have the mulligrubs. You look so sour.’.
1939		T.J. Farr ‘The Language of the Tennessee Mountain Regions’ in AS XIV:2 91: in the mulligrubs. Despondent or in low spirits.

2. (also mulligrugs) stomach ache, colic, diarrhoea [note US regional use: menstruation].

1619		Fletcher Monsieur Thomas (1639) II iii: Whose dog lyes sick o’th mulligrubs?
1634		S. Rowley Noble Souldier IV i: The Divell lyes sicke of the Mulligrubs.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy V 311: The Cramp, the Stitch, the Squirt, the Itch, the Gout, the Stone, the Pox, the Mulligrubs, the Bonny Scrubs, and all.
1733		Laugh and Be Fat 149: Here take my Pills, I cure all Ills [...] The Mulligrubs, the Bonny Scrubs, and all, all, all.
1738		Swift Polite Conversation 32: What! you are sick of the Mulligrubs with eating chopt Hay?
1818		Morn. Post (London) 6 Apr. 3/4: Drink all your quart-pots out, / And, spite of mulligraubs, / Join in one conquering shout.
1832		Berks. Chron. 25 Feb. 2/1: ‘The woman died of the real malignant cholera,’ say the doctors on one side. ‘The woman died of the mulligrubs,’ say the doctors on the other.
1835		G. Kent Modern Flash Dict. 22: Mullygrubs – the belly ache.
1839		Leicester Chron. 27 Apr. 4/5: The tirade by ‘him of the Journal’ was caused by a fit of the mulligrubs.
1840		T. Haliburton Clockmaker III 58: It draws the cold out and keeps it from flyin’ to the stomach, and saves you a fit of the mulligrubs.
1844		Exeter & Plymouth Gaz. 4 May 4/1: A severe attack of the mulligrubs, or that which the Spanish call ‘Dolor en las Tripas’.
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open 116: Mullygrubs, the belly ache.
1851		John o’ Groat Jrnl 5 Dec. 4/2: Nor did the m,ulligrubs affect the King, nor did we feel a little queer.
1859, 1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc.
1862		Hants. Advertiser 14 June 7/6: Even the claret of Gladstone’s own vintage, / If drunk to excess [...] will conduce to that inward acidity’s mintage / which people low-minded the ‘mulligrubs’ call.
1866		C.H. Smith Bill Arp 68: A lot of sickly, tallow-faced gentlemen, who’ve got the gout, or the blind-piles, or the sore back, or the belchin’ dispepsy, or the grubbs, or the Chinese diarrhoea.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 51: Mulligrubs, stomach-ache.
1900		Eve. Post 17 July 6/7: The Chinese [...] have doctors for internal disease [...] and doctors for ‘mulligrubs’.
1929		B. Duffy Rocky Road 179: If ye drink it ye’ll have the mulligrugs within in ye.
1976		E. Dahlberg Olive of Minerva 84: He’s sick of the mulligrubs.

3. as a nickname.

1605		Marston Dutch Curtezan I i: That man of much money [...] cogging Cocledemoy, comes this night late into mine hostes Mulligrubs Taverne heere.
1630		J. Taylor ‘Fearefull Summer’ in Works (1869) I 63: Master Mulligrubs, Mistris Frump, Goodman Beetle the Constable, Gaffer Logg the Hedgeborough, and Block the Tythingman.
1894		Whitstable Times 29 Sept. 4/1: What shall I say about that old Mulligrubs the millionaire [...] He kicked me downstairs.
1874		Western Dly Press 29 May 3/4: The ironmasters had been so hardly pressed by these mulligrubs [i.e. strikers] and coal kings that they had been obliged to give way.