Muggle
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈmʌɡl̩/
rhymes: -ʌɡəl
Forms: form: Muggles
form: muggle
Etymology: From mug (“gullible or easily cheated person”) + -le (diminutive suffix), coined by British author J. K. Rowling in her 1997 book Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. She later said in a 2004 interview that the word was made to imply both "foolishness and loveability".
Senses: examples: text: The magical and the muggle are separated by a river, wide and deep. I could see across, but I couldn't get across, [...].
ref: 2005, Christine Wicker, Not in Kansas Anymore: A Curious Tale of How Magic is Transforming America, New York, N.Y.: HarperSanFrancisco, →ISBN, page 194:
text: Once again, THE magic-working Karmidee, marginalized by THE Muggle-ish Normals, are threatened by a coup in THE city's government [...]
ref: 2005 April 1, “Kirkus Reviews, review of Charlotte Haptie, Otto and the Bird Charmers”, in Dow Jones:
text: In her second outing as a witch — the first being Practical Magic (1998) — Nicole Kidman plays Isabel, a witch who's trying to settle down to the Muggle life of a suburban housewife.
ref: 2005 August 19, Felix Cheong, “Age-old sexism still pervades films about witches and wizards”, in Channel NewsAsia:
text: It could all be deadly earnest if she didn't have a sense of humor. My favorite sentence is a chapter title: "Every time you hear a bell, a Muggle has turned magical."
ref: 2005 September 30, Jeffrey Weiss, “Review of Christine Wicker, Not in Kansas Anymore”, in The Dallas Morning News:
text: As it was nearing Halloween, we were able to join a potions class where we could change liquids into myriad colours with the addition of substances like dragon spit (muggle’s lemon juice).
ref: 2007 November 11, Lesley Oldfield, “Family break a eureka moment”, in Sunday Sun, Newcastle upon Tyne: Reach plc, →ISSN, →OCLC:
text: There's another guy playing [Bob] Dylan as a formal poet facing some kind of muggle inquisition, but this is the movie's briefest and least consequential thread.
ref: 2007 November 21, Gary Thompson, “Dylan divided by six”, in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia, Pa.: The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC, →ISSN, →OCLC:
glosses: A person who has no magical abilities.
examples: text: This video game won’t appeal to muggles.
text: [...] I have finally worked out that the word ECNALUBMA in back-to-front writing translates as 'get out of my way, you Muggle motorist'.
ref: 2003 May 14, “There are too many flashing lights nowadays for a knight of the road …”, in Nursing Standard:
text: Some activists might know little of this ‘exterior’, such is their facility to move between activist spaces and places without having to encounter the ever-increasingly one-dimensional world in which the ‘muggles’ live.
ref: 2005, David Harvie, Ben Trott, Keir Milburn, editors, Shut Them Down!: The G8, Gleneagles 2005 and the Movement of Movements, Leeds, West Yorkshire: Dissent!; Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.: Autonomedia, →ISBN, page 343:
text: But to me, remembering what it was like to be a beginner is also an exercise in humility. I see a lot of people wanting to push ahead, faster, in all directions, and I find this to be… woefully out of step with even the Muggles who know me, […]
ref: 2021 October 31, Ace Admiral [username], “Why is no one talking about the tip of the spear?: An^([sic]) reading of the asexual academy through Skopos Theory”, in A Hand-Painted China Plate at a Barbeque, WordPress, retrieved 02 Nov 2021:
synonyms: word: basic bitch
word: bourgeois
word: L7
word: mainstreamer
word: mainstreamist
word: muggle
word: mundane
word: normal
word: normalfag
word: normaloid
word: normie
word: square
word: straight
glosses: A person who lacks a particular ability or skill; a non-specialist; (also) a person who is not a member of a group; an outsider or cowan.
examples: text: At some point when you're out geocaching, you'll run into Muggles. The trouble with Muggles is they have no idea what the sport of geocaching is all about. If they see you find a cache, they might get into the cache after you leave—to see what you were up to.
ref: 2004, Joel McNamara, Geocaching for Dummies (For Dummies), Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, →ISBN, page 125:
text: Try not to let the muggles see you find a Cache.
ref: 2006, Wisconsin Natural Resources, Madison, Wis.: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 89:
text: Use Stealth. Commonly used in a place with a high muggle-to-geocacher ratio.
ref: 2010, Paul Gillin, Dana Gillin, “Appendix A: Glossary”, in The Joy of Geocaching […], Fresno, Calif.: Quill Driver Books, →ISBN, page 235:
text: Each time we made a find [Teresa] Hinton would check there were no muggles, or non-geocachers, around before taking the container from its hiding place.
ref: 2016 February 16, Selina Powell, “The hidden world of geocaching in Marlborough”, in Marlborough Express (reproduced on Stuff), Blenheim, New Zealand: Stuff, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 16 May 2020:
text: Caches can be hidden in a disguised container, or very small package, and one element of difficulty is hiding caches in urban locations, where the hunter will have to avoid being spotted by ‘muggles’ – the name given to those unaware of the sport. Muggles will be surprised at the scale of the secret game taking place under their noses.
ref: 2018 February 6, Joseph Smith, “The ‘dead drop’ in Stokes Croft may be more than it appears”, in Bristol Post, Bristol, Somerset: Reach plc, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 10 Feb 2018:
synonyms: word: basic bitch
word: bourgeois
word: L7
word: mainstreamer
word: mainstreamist
word: muggle
word: mundane
word: normal
word: normalfag
word: normaloid
word: normie
word: square
word: straight
glosses: A person who lacks a particular ability or skill; a non-specialist; (also) a person who is not a member of a group; an outsider or cowan.
A person not involved in the pastime of geocaching.