Mud-slinger, subs. (common).—A slanderer.
Mud-student, subs. (see def.).—A student at the Agricultural College,
Cirencester.
1856. Notes & Queries, 2 S. ii. 198. A young friend of mine ... a
mud-student.
Muff, subs. (old).—1. A milksop; a bungler; a dolt. See quots. 1598,
1648, 1862 and 1879. Also muffin.
1586–1606. Warner, Albion’s England. ‘Those stiles to him were
strange, but thay Did feofe them on the bace-borne muffe, and him
as king obay.’
1598. Florio, Worlde of Wordes. Pupo, a pigsneye, a sweet-hart, a
prettie muffe, a daintie mop etc. Ibid. Stiti-cozzie, swearing or
swaggring muffs or dutchmen.
c. 1610. Chamberlain, Letters, 159. More than beseemed the King to
give to such muffes.
1648. Travels of Sir John Reresby [quoted in Notes and Queries, 2
S. ix. 402]. The Low Dutch call the High muffes, that is étourdis
as the French have it, or blockheads.
1830. W. T. Moncrieff, The Heart of London, act. ii. sc. i. A
visitor? hurrah: some muffin, I daresay.
1837. R. H. Barham, The Ingoldsby Legends (ed. 1862), p. 437. If
any young man, though a snubb’d younger brother When told of her
faults by his father or mother Runs restive, and goes off to sea in
a huff, Depend on’t, my friends, that young man’s a muff!
1843. W. T. Moncrieff, The Scamps of London, ii. sc. 1. I’m a
ruined homo—a muff.
1845. Disraeli, Sybil, p. 146 [ed. 1863]. ‘I came about him. I
wished to know whether he were alive, and that you have been able
to inform me and where he was; and that you have not been able to
inform me.’ ‘Why you’re a regular muff!’
1849. Thackeray, Hoggarty Diamond, xi. Another called me a muff
(which means, in the slang language, a very silly fellow).
1850. Smedley, Frank Fairleigh, 26. ‘Put on the gloves!’ repeated
I; ‘how do you mean?—what has that to do with Lawless?’ ‘Oh, you
muff! don’t you understand?—of course, I mean the boxing-gloves.’
1857. G. A. Lawrence, Guy Livingston, xii. I heard him growl out,
‘That there muff’s enough to spile one’s taste for a fortnit.’
1857. Hood, Pen and Pencil Pictures, p. 144. Awful muff! Can’t pull
two strokes without catching as many crabs; he’d upset the veriest
tub on the river.
1862. Notes and Queries, 3 S. i. 56. Muff is the nickname applied
by the natives of the Low Countries to all foreigners ... the term
will have passed the Channel with the motley troops of William III.
1866. Mansfield, School Life, 136. I must now proceed to football,
a game I like ... far more than cricket. The reason is simple: I
was a tolerably good hand at the former, and rather a muff at the
latter.
1869. Daily Telegraph, 2 Sept. Boys do not generally like to be
considered muffs. What but a muff—a muff of the most hopeless,
helpless sort—is a young fellow who cannot manage, by motions which
Nature herself almost indicates in such a crisis, to keep himself
afloat?
1879. Notes and Queries, 5 S. xii. 16. Muff = a stupid person may
have been introduced into England from the Netherlands, probably in
the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In Dutch, Mof = (1) a clown, a boor;
(2) as a nickname, a German and particularly a Westphalian.
Moffenland = Germany, Westphalia. This muf (2) occurs in Marlowe,
Tamburlane, i. 1. Sclavonians.... Muffs and Danes.
1888. Rolf Boldrewood, Robbery Under Arms, xliii. What a muff Sir
Ferdinand must be.