From Tim Evanson (in Cleveland OH) on Facebook this morning:
Whew, it’s muggy out here….
I’ll get to the weather in Cleveland in a little while, but first, about the word muggy.
The word muggy sounds like a portmanteau, suggesting mucky, buggy, misty, foggy, drizzly (and maybe some other relevant words). But historically, it’s just an adjective in –y from a noun mug. From NOAD:
adj muggy: (of the weather) unpleasantly warm and humid: it was a hot, very muggy evening. ORIGIN mid 17th century: from dialect mug ‘mist, drizzle’, from mug ‘to drizzle’, probably from Old Norse; compare with Icelandic mugga ‘to snow in calm weather’, Norwegian mugga ‘to drizzle’.
The weather in Cleveland. On Facebook, responding to Tim Evanson:
— Bill Schlemmel: You can cut it with a knife!
— TE > BS: Like getting hit in the face with a hot, wet kleenex.
Ick.
July 29, 2023 at 11:14 am |
“Today will be muggy, followed by tueggy, weggy, and thurgy.” I don’t remember when I learned that, but it was at least fifty years ago. I found multiple recent citations online.
July 30, 2023 at 11:18 am |
The weathermen’s repartee reminds me of a scene from Conrad’s “Typhoon”:
“The weather’s awful. It would make a saint swear. Even up here I feel exactly as if I had my head tied up in a woollen blanket.”
Captain MacWhirr looked up. “D’ye mean to say, Mr. Jukes, you ever had your head tied up in a blanket? What was that for?”