HEY YOU, MUCKFACE!<) 

     Are you stuck in muck, mired in muck, all mucked-up, mucking around, or perhaps you’re a top muckity-muck in your business or organization?  

     I just finished a fun blog post about “muck” for a client at http://blog.igburton.com and that started me thinking about the value of popularizing, and ways to popularize, increased use of this great word.  You know, like substituting it for another more-commonly-used word that sounds like it (um, no, not “luck” or “buck”). 

     For formalized discussion purposes, we may want to know that somewhere between “mu” (the 12th letter of the Greek alphabet) and (ugh!) “mucus,” the Oxford English Dictionary devotes considerable attention to muck and its derivatives.  These include family members “mucky,” muckiness,” “muckle,” “muckraking,” and my personal favorite: “mucker.” 

     Now, I once owned a horse for a couple of years, so I have firsthand knowledge of “mucking out” a stall, which I suppose makes me an ex-mucker?  Anyway, there are better ways to spend a hot humid afternoon.  I even saved the pitchfork to remind myself why not to ever own another horse!    

     The dictionary even digs up “Lady Muck” as a socially pretentious British woman, which gives cause to wonder were the Lady to have children, would she be a mother mucker?

     Now, I don’t want us to go off the deep end here, so let me simply say that “muck” has a probable origin in Scandanavia from a Germanic base meaning “soft.” 

     That’s nice, I think, don’t you?  I mean wouldn’t it serve to soften up all those hard, harsh expressions that use the other similar-sounding word?  Think of a few that of course you’ve never spoken but which you’ve undoubtedly heard, and change the word involved to “muck.” 

     There now, isn’t that better?  Softer?  Just imagine what’s possible.  It could be a whole new political crusade.  Like “A Chicken in Every Pot,” and “The New Deal,” and “The Great Society.”  And now, with your help: “The Softening of Society.”  It would seem like a kinder, gentler life.  All because of muck. 

     Oh, well.  Dream on, you muckers!                            halalpiar    

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