Grouch (person)

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As muffle is colloquially a sullen or surly person. It also describes people who are indifferent or disinterested in a certain thing.

Word origin

Muffel , from muffeln - "chewing with your mouth full" is probably related to Dutch moppen , Low German mopping , pug according to the Duden . The word is related to the adjective musty - "damp, musty ". A subsidiary form of this is “muddled”, hence the adjective “ rebellious ”. In the German dictionary by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm it says about Muffel: “ After the loud muff, grumpy, sullen man [...]; also for hypocrites , hypocrites : L. H. von Nicolay translated Molière's Tartüffe under the invented proper name Muffel, or the hypocritical. "Another Herleitungsmöglichkeit results from alemannisch meffen -" grumble ", from sleeves -" back bay "and which in turn derived muffle -" contentious woman. "

The grammatical-critical dictionary of the High German dialect of Adelung 1793 says:

“The grouch, des -s, plur. ut nom. sing. a word used only in common life in some regions to designate a creature, and most often a dog with thick drooping lips, that of the Lower. is called a Lobbe. [...] In a broader sense, an ugly face with a hanging mouth is called muffle in French, which is the name given in the fine arts to animal larvae , especially lion faces, which, like the grimaceous faces, are sometimes used as ornaments, and which too are called Muffel in German. In the Lower. where to muffle also means to hang one's mouth, a muffle is a person who maules. Presumably, therefore, the word muffle has sometimes been used as a peculiar name for a hypocritical head and mouth pendant in religion. In France, the hermits were formerly called only Ermoufles out of contempt. [...] "

use

Muffle is now mostly used as a gender-neutral swear word for the characteristics of ill-tempered and narrow-mindedness.

In addition, the word became a “ suffixoid ” in everyday language to express a person's aversion to a certain activity or behavioral norm. In formations with nouns it marks a person who is indifferent to something, is not interested in something or does not value something. Examples are the Duden about marriage or fashion bores listed. Other composites are often used couch potatoes , sleepy heads , tie muffle or sexless person .

See also

Web links

Wiktionary: Muffel  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Muffel in duden.de, accessed on June 22, 2011.
  2. ↑ muffeln on duden.de, accessed on June 24, 2011.
  3. ↑ a b Helmut Birkhan : Etymology of German. German textbook collection Volume 15, Lang, 1985, ISBN 978-3-261-03206-5 , p. 218, online , accessed on June 22, 2011.
  4. ↑ a b Bibliographisches Institut Mannheim (ed.): Duden: the dictionary of origin. Etymology of the German language. The history of German words up to the present. Volume 7, Dudenverlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-411-04074-2 , p. 542, online , accessed on June 22, 2011.
  5. ^ German dictionary by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, Vol. 12, Sp. 2623–2624
  6. ^ Johann Christoph von Schmid: Swabian dictionary with etymological and historical notes. 1831, p. 381, online .
  7. ^ Adelung, Grammatical-Critical Dictionary of High German Dialect, Volume 3. Leipzig 1798, p. 299, online at zeno.org
  8. ^ Gabriele Scheffler: Swear words in the subject stock of a society, Tectum Verlag 2000, p. 160, online
  9. ↑ -muffel in duden.de, accessed on June 22, 2011.