Shaggy Dogs & Black Sheep by Albert Jack

October 16th 2005


We Muffed it Up

To Muff something is to make an easy mistake or, in the context of sport, to fail to catch a ball. The word can also be applied to the person involved, who is perceived as awkward, clumsy and dull.

It has been in use for centuries and possibly originates from a play called The Rival Candidates (1774) in which the character Sir Harry Muff appears as a clumsy, blundering old fool. 'Muff' became more widely recognized and used, particularly by schoolboys, as a result of Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857), which regularly includes the word, as in: 'I didn't think, madam, that you would have been such a muff as to let him be getting wet through at this time of day.' 'Muff' has been applied in other ways too over the years.

For example, in Ireland the word has been used to indicate a flat or level plain, and there are still several towns and villages going by the name of Muff. Eglinton, for instance, when it was founded in 1619 by the Grocers' Company of London, was originally called Muff until its name was changed in 1858 in honour of the 13th Earl of Eglinton. In Sweden, muff means 'sleeve', which in turn derives from the Dutch word mof, and is also the name given to a woollen hand warmer that hangs down at about waist height, suspended from a cord around the neck.

Fashionable women all over Scandinavia were soon getting out their muffs on cold days to keep their hands warm, and the fashion spread to England. These hand warmers are still used in Scandinavia, and ladies often now slip a small chemically powered heating element into their muffs for added warmth. This is also where the term Ear Muffs originates.