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mickle

UK/ˈmɪk(ə)l/ US/ˈmɪkəl/ uncommon archaic obsolete

noun

1.

(often followed by `of'') a large number or amount or extent

  • “a batch of letters”
  • “a deal of trouble”
  • “a lot of money”
  • “he made a mint on the stock market”
  • “it must have cost plenty”
Synonyms

Origin

From Middle English mickle, michel, mikel, mochel, muchel, mukel (“much; many; large, tall; great”), from Old English miċel, myċel (“big, large; great; much”), from Proto-Germanic *mikilaz (“great, large; many, much”), from Proto-Indo-European *méǵh₂s (“big, great”). The word is cognate with Faroese mikil (“large, great, much”), Icelandic mikill (“large in quantity or number; much; great”), Middle High German michel (“large, much”). Doublet of much and muckle. For the adverb and noun forms, compare Middle English muchel (“extensively, greatly, much”, adverb) and Middle English muchel (“large amount”, noun). The noun sense “a small amount” was due to the proverb many a little makes a mickle being incorrectly rendered as many a mickle makes a muckle, leading to mickle being thought to mean “a small quantity” and muckle to mean “a large quantity”, even though muckle is a variant of mickle and both mean “a large quantity”.

Phrases

  • many a mickle makes a muckle

Related words

Word family

Broader terms

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WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.