Word.ws English Dictionary

muckle

/ˈmʌkəl/

muckle noun: a great amount.

Noun (1)

muckle (plural muckles)

  1. (Scotland) A great amount.

Adjective

muckle (comparative muckler, superlative mucklest)

  1. (Scotland, archaic, outside-Northumbria) Large, massive.
    • She clorts a muckle piece [sandwich] tae me, wi' different kinds o' jam,c. 1930, George S. Morris, song A Pair o Nicky-tams
  2. (Scotland, archaic, outside-Northumbria) Much.
    • But long they waited, and longer still, / With doubt and muckle pain, / But woe were the hearts of his brethren, / For he came not back again.1890, Joseph Jacobs, “Childe Rowland”, in English Fairy Tales, page 118

Verb

muckle (third-person singular simple present muckles, present participle muckling, simple past and past participle muckled)

  1. (Maine, Vermont) To latch onto something with the mouth.
    • And how'd she get such a holt on you, Terence Campion, let alone the way she's muckled onto those Bennetts?1954, Elizabeth Ogilvie, The Dawning of the Day, page 199
    • Another technique for the baby who is having trouble muckling on involves a breast or nipple shield.2002, William G. Wilkoff, The Maternity Leave Breastfeeding Plan, →ISBN, page 87
  2. (rare) To talk big; to exaggerate.
    • I told him all, / Both bad and good; / I bade him call — / He said he would: / I added much — the more I muckled, / The more that chuckling chummy chuckled!1896, W.S. Gilbert, “The Grand Duke, or the Statutory Duel”, in The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan, published 1941
    Synonyms:
    mickle

Noun (2)

muckle (plural muckles)

  1. A maul or hammer.
    • Then the caplin moved off, and five minutes later there was no sound except the splash of the sinkers overside, the flapping of the cod, and the whack of the muckles as the men stunned them.1897, Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous

Proper noun capitalized: Muckle

Muckle (plural Muckles)

  1. A surname.

Synonyms of muckle

Forms of muckle

Noun
pluralmuckles
Adjective
comparativemuckler
superlativemucklest
Verb
third-person singular presentmuckles
present participlemuckling
past participlemuckled
pastmuckled
Proper noun
pluralMuckles

Origin of muckle

From Middle English mukel, muchel, from the same source as (perhaps a variant of) mickle.

Two possible origins: * From Middle English muchel (“big”), a nickname for a big man. * Borrowed from German Mückle, a diminutive of Muck.

Words formed from muckle

Words that rhyme with muckle

19 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about muckle

What does muckle mean?
Muckle means a great amount.
What part of speech is muckle?
Muckle can be a noun, an adjective, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce muckle?
Muckle is pronounced /ˈmʌkəl/.
What is the plural of muckle?
The plural of muckle is muckles.

Words near muckle in the dictionary

  1. muckites
  2. muckity-muck
  3. muckity-mucks
  4. muckland
  5. mucklands
  6. muckle
  7. Muckle-Wells syndrome
  8. muckled
  9. Muckleford
  10. Muckleford South
  11. muckler

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: muckle (page history and authors); Muckle (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-muckle.wav.

Cite this entry: “muckle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/muckle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.