Here's a Monday-morning sort of a word:
murgeon.
All its meanings are easily as grumpy as they sound. It can mean a cross face (stupid alarm clock!) a contortion of the body (ooch, I'm stiff!) or it can mean just plain grumbling. In fact it usually means lots of grumblings, because in this meaning it's generally used in the plural.
For these meanings of murgeon we have to thank, as for so much else, the Scots. But the Scots don't have a monopoly on the word, as in both the East and North West England murgeon means an area of dirt or mud or old cement, especially when used as a fertiliser.
So there we are. Feel free to spot - or have - a good murgeon today.
Especially if you happen to tread in some.
Spot the frippet: murgeon. My only murgeon about this satisfying word is that no one knows where either meaning came from. The mud word goes back to the 1400s, though.
murgeon.
All its meanings are easily as grumpy as they sound. It can mean a cross face (stupid alarm clock!) a contortion of the body (ooch, I'm stiff!) or it can mean just plain grumbling. In fact it usually means lots of grumblings, because in this meaning it's generally used in the plural.
For these meanings of murgeon we have to thank, as for so much else, the Scots. But the Scots don't have a monopoly on the word, as in both the East and North West England murgeon means an area of dirt or mud or old cement, especially when used as a fertiliser.
So there we are. Feel free to spot - or have - a good murgeon today.
Especially if you happen to tread in some.
Photo: Lis Burke, wikimedia commons.
Spot the frippet: murgeon. My only murgeon about this satisfying word is that no one knows where either meaning came from. The mud word goes back to the 1400s, though.
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