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 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.

2. (common).—Anything badly bungled.

3. (old).—See quot. 1607.

1607. Dekker, Northward Ho, iv. 3. Marry, muff, sing thou better, for I'll go sleep my old sleeps. [Dyce in note in Webster's Wks., p. 274 (1859)