mickle
/ˈmɪk(ə)l
/(also muckle) archaic or Scottish & Northern English Usage
noun
A large amount.It didn't fare so well with the question ‘How many mickle in a muckle?’
adjective
Very large: she had a great big elephant ... that’s one of those mickle beasts from Africa...
- Do you know there's this old church in Aberdeen that's now a great muckle warren o' a pub that can hold 1,500 folk?
- ‘When they cast the colours at the end of the Selkirk common riding a great, muckle lump comes into my throat, even though I ken it's a load o' rubbish.’
- The footballer has vowed to walk out on the club that he loves if they carry on meeting his heartfelt pleas for talks on his future with a muckle wall of silence.
determiner & pronoun
Much; a large amount.
Usage
The original proverb many a little makes a mickle was misquoted (and first recorded in the writing of George Washington, 1793) as many a mickle makes a muckle. While mickle and muckle are, by origin, merely variants of the same (now dialect) word meaning ‘a large amount’, the misquotation spawned a misunderstanding that has now become widespread: that mickle means ‘a small amount’, and muckle means the opposite, ‘a large amount’.
Phrases
many a little makes a mickle
Origin
Old English micel 'great, numerous, much', of Germanic origin; from an Indo-European root shared by Greek megas, megal-.