Muck, Lady

   This mock name is used to someone who, in the speaker’s opinion, is trying to act like a lady - pretend that she is refined and cultivated, though she is in reality ‘as common as muck’. An example of its use occurs in The Amberstone Exit, by Elaine Feinstein. When a young woman comments on the wild behaviour of some young football supporters, she is addressed by one of them in this way. In Fares Please, by Edith Courtney, a man says to a woman: ‘What the hell’s the matter with you, Lady Muck?’ when she shows that she disapproves of his behaviour.

   There is an island called Muck in the Hebrides, subject of an onomastic anecdote in James Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Boswell remarks that it is the custom for Scottish lairds to be known by the name of their lands, and continues: It was somewhat droll to hear this Laird called by his title. Muck would have sounded ill; so he was called Isle of Muck, which went off with great readiness. The name, as now written, is unseemly, but is not so bad in the original Erse, which is Monach, signifying the Sows’ Island…Some call it the Isle of Monk. The Laird insists that this is the proper name.