mucker n.1
1. a heavy fall; thus come a mucker, go a mucker, to come to grief, to ruin oneself; also fig. use.
| , , | ![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Sl. Dict. 182: go a mucker, to rush headlong into certain ruin. |
| O.V.H. II 120: It’s a deuce of a mucker about Bradshaw. | |
| Little Mr. Bouncer 27: Mr. Bouncer [...] hinted at the probability of his ‘running a fearful mucker’. | |
| ‘’Arry on the Turf’ in Punch 29 Nov. 297/1: I tell yer, old man, it was proper (exceptin’ for my mucker, of course). | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 6: Mucker (to go a) - To go to grief, to ruin onesself [sic]. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Harvard Crimson 12 Jan. 🌐 Moreover [...] the graduates afloat in the hard work of life ‘do not go muckers’ in anything like the same proportion; do not, when they fail, go under so hopelessly, or take to drink or disreputable courses so often. | |
| Northampton Mercury 8 Jan. 11/4: If he ain’t careful he’ll come a-mucker, Old Barky. | |
| On the Wallaby 293: I’m old Jim Collins, old Jim Collins, gone a mucker — poor old Jim! | |
| Round London 218: Mr. --, of yours, who went such a dreadful mucker over last year’s Derby. | |
| Broadford Courier (Vic.) 25 Feb. 5/3: People no longer get into trouble. They simply ‘go a mucker’. | |
| Pink ’Un and Pelican 148: The bright young spirit who has ‘gone a mucker’ in Capel Court or Lombard Street, usually drifts into the shadier cirles of the Turf. | |
| Gem 21 Oct. 9: Of course, I couldn’t help your coming a mucker over that serenade bizney. | |
| Pincher Martin 378: I’m glad we didn’t come a mucker – jolly glad! | |
| Bulldog Drummond 124: Go an absolute mucker over the cabbages, what! | |
| Gloucester Citizen 18 Nov. 4/3: They take a fiendish delight in seeing a young man ‘Come a mucker’. | |
| (ref. to 1870) Public School Slang 69: mucker: an awkward fall at football. |
2. in negative descriptions of persons.
(a) (US) a street urchin or youth who does not go to college; also attrib.
| Harvard Crimson 20 Nov. 🌐 Even the mucker element [...] was more in sympathy with the unfettered student and the lurking proctor, than the peremptory and unromantic system of the officials of modern and un-civil law. [...] The Port is our vampire. Her government runs streets for shops through our sacred soil, her peelers interfere with our after-dinner reveries, her people crowd our conveyances to Boston, her factories disgust us. Her mucker roams in freedom through our sacred yard, her maiden robs the freedom of the student’s heart. | |
| Yale Yarns 273: Paige [...] advised Little Jack not to monkey with the townies down on Church Street or the muckers would ‘push in his little mug until they bent his back teeth in a scrap with them’. | |
| Diary of a Freshman 221: The proctors stroll to the windows to watch the muckers throwing snowballs. | |
| (con. 1900s) Elmer Gantry 29: Trying to convert me! Right before those muckers! |
(b) a fanatic, a hypocrite.
| ‘’Arry to the Front!’ in Punch 9 Mar. 100/2: But Charlie, old chip, there’s a Party, a nasty, mean, snivelling gang, [...] As goes in a mucker for Rooshia. | |
| ‘Politics’ in Sandburrs 92: I goes an’ gets nex’ to this mucker an’ jollies his game. | |
| letter 24 Jan. in Paige (1971) 104: At any rate, it will upset the muckers who are already crowing about the death of vorticism. | |
| This Side of Paradise in Bodley Head Scott Fitzgerald III (1960) 161: Why is it that the pick of the young Englishmen from Oxford and Cambridge go into politics and in the U.S.A. we leave it to the muckers? | |
| (con. 1939) Mad in Pursuit 171: Christ, I hate em! All of em! Dirty muckers! |
(c) a rough, coarse person.
| Harvard Crimson 9 June 🌐 [...] ‘a short, thickset young man with the countenance of a brakeman,’ of muckers, muckerish. | |
| Fables in Sl. (1902) 108: He said the Fellow had made a Mistake, that was all; they were not Muckers; they were Nice Boys. | |
| Varmint 116: I want to get at him, the great, big mucker! | |
| Babbitt (1974) 68: I’d stand right up to any mucker that passed a slighting remark on my sister. | |
| Hustling Hobo 259: Came here as a plain mucker and knew nobody in the country. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Within the Gates iv: Where would you muckers be if it warnt for us swaddies, eh? | |
| in Limerick (1953) 318: There was a young fellow named Tucker / Who rushed at his mother to fuck her. / His mother said, ‘Damn! / Don’t you know who I am? / You act like a regular mucker!’. | |
| (con. WWII) Deathmakers 45: Then when we’ve got the muckers in the bind the three of them come out with their mucking hands up. | |
| ‘The Open Book’ in Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing (1995) 112: A miner and mucker, the phony cock-sucker, / and his racket is wranglin’ dudes. | |
| Miseducation of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly (2004) 226: We’re in the final against Newbridge of all schools – crowd of muckers. |
(d) (US campus) a mean, untrustworthy person; a ‘bounder’.
| Topeka Dly Capital (KS) 22 Feb. 2/4: Animate and inanimate objects, which in his day had been known as ‘grinds,’ ‘muckers,’ ‘shacks,’ ‘rushes,’ ‘cuts,’ ‘swipes,’ etc. | |
| ‘College Words and Phrases’ in DN II:i 46: mucker, n. A mean, tricky fellow. | |
| Salt Lake Trib. (UT) 15 Mar. 17/5: ‘He’s — he’s a mucker’ [...] ‘Yes he is,‘ the coach continued impetuously, ‘a mucker, a first-class mucker [...] and every son-of-a-gun in that boat owes it to the college to do his damnedest’. | |
| Sophomore 7: All. Aw — you mucker. Greasy grind . | |
| ‘IOU’ in Score by Innings (2004) 351: He’d rather lose with a team of gentlemen than import any muckers. | |
| Cruel Fellowship 97: Well, you get the hell out of here damn quick, you dirty mucker! |
(e) attrib. use of sense 2d.
| Varmint 81: ‘Trying to put him out, are you?’ ‘Mucker trick!’. |
3. (US tramp) a manual labourer.
| ‘Muckers’ Chicago Poems 21: Twenty men stand watching the muckers. / Stabbing the sides of the ditch. | |
| Hobo 93: A ‘mucker’ or a ‘shovel stiff’ is a man who does manual labor on construction jobs. | |
| Main Stem 76: There were two prostitutes who had a high reputation. One was called the Mucker’s Dream. | |
| Milk and Honey Route 24: The rawjawed teameos and muckers, dynoes and shantymen who built that railroad. | |
| (con. 1940s) Do Not Go Gentle (1962) 92: Norman was made a mucker on the thirty-six hundred level. |
In derivatives
(US campus) coarse, ill-bred.
| Harvard Crimson 9 June 🌐 [...] ‘a short, thickset young man with the countenance of a brakeman,’ of muckers, muckerish. | |
| Public Ledger (Phila.) 4 June 6: Cheering by the side benefited [by a misplay] was distinctly out of order; it was, in the elegant language of the campus, ‘muckerish,’ and the college which practiced it was composed of ‘muckers’ [DA]. |
In phrases
to squander, to waste, to ‘splash out’.
| (con. 1830s–60s) All That Swagger 238: William went a mucker and bought a double-seated buggy to take his parents to see his nephew. | |
| Marsh 73: They sought the lake in Victoria Park and, unable to resist the line of boats, ‘went a mucker’ with their pence. |