Word Wednesday.



1: secrecy

2: confusion, muddle

[Origin: one of a number of similar-sounding reduplicated words in use around this time and meaning much the same thing, including hucker-mucker, which may be the original of the bunch if the root is, as some think, Middle English mukre “to hoard up, conceal.”]



1: secret

2: of a confused or disorderly nature: jumbled.

-hugger-mugger adverb.

“No, her book would hold a dark mirror to such conceits. Since Mother Eve’s day, women had whispered of herb lore and crafty potions, the wise woman’s weapons against the injustices of life; a life of ill treatment, the life of a dog. If women were to be kicked into the kitchen they might play it to their advantage, for what was a kitchen but a witch’s brewhouse? Men had no notion of what women whispered to each other, hugger-mugger by the chimney corner; of treaclish syrups and bitter pods, of fat black berries and bulbous roots.  – A Taste for Nightshade, Martine Bailey.


  1. says

    Whenever I hear that word I think of Laibach’s song “F.I.A.T.”

    You are in black darkness and confusion. You have been hugger-muggered, and carom-shotted into a war, and you know nothing about it. You know nothing about the forces that caused it, or you know next to nothing. You ought not to be in this war. You cannot win this war.

  2. Rob Grigjanis says

    I like this possible etymology;

    perhaps from Anglo-Irish cuggermugger (“a whispering, a low-voiced gossiping”), from Irish cogair (“whisper”). Compare also Swedish mjugg.

    mjugg means “sly”, so probably cognate with the ME muckre. Maybe with British slang “mucker”=”friend”.

  3. says

    That would be a very different meaning to the actual one.

    Yup! My definition was intercepted by art. It’s a word I don’t encounter much, so that became my canonical version.

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