Micawber
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: A name likely coined by Charles Dickens, evidently reminiscent of common Irish, Scots, and Scottish Gaelic surnames starting with Mc-, Mac-, both from Old Irish macc (“son, child”) (see more there). For the second particle, compare names like Aubrey; similar surnames like M(a)cAubrey are attested around Dickens' time and thus Micawber may represent a dialectal variation.
Inflected forms:
form: Micawbers
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: Mr. Micawber
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: Micawbers
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: Micawbering
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: Micawbered
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: Micawbered
pos: verb
tags: past
form: Mr. Micawber
pos: verb
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: A person who is poor but eternally optimistic, believing that "something will turn up", like the fictional character Wilkins Micawber in the 1850 Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield.
pos: noun
examples: As it is I see Destitution and Despair ahead of me, and have begun an epitaph in the Micawber style for my future grave in the precincts of my native County's jail.
... a state of feeling which I may perhaps best describe as the Micawber condition. If only gold would turn up! Gold might turn up any day! But as gold did not turn up, — then would not Providence be so good as to allow something else to turn up!
Micawbers far from home, they waited for something to turn up.
Austria was the Micawber of Europe. After all something might turn up.
We are constantly being assured, not by one Mr. Micawber, but by three or four Mr. Micawbers, that something is on the point of "turning up." Yet nothing ever does turn up.
His reason was no longer concern that the news might destroy her accord with what she was concentrating on, since that was no longer valid now, if it had ever been, and it was no longer the possibility that he might find something else before she would need to know, for that was not valid either now, since he had tried that and failed, nor was it the Micawber-like faith of the inert in tomorrow; it was partly perhaps the knowledge that late enough would be soon enough, but mostly (he did not try to fool himself) it was a profound faith in her.
Only a year ago it would have needed a "super-Micawber" to be optimistic that the railways would once again pay their way. But it was no longer a pipe dream that B.R. could make a profit, the way to do it was now clear.
The Micawber rules of debt as ruin oppressed ministers as much as individuals.
gloss: To be optimistic that "something will turn up", in the style of Wilkins Micawber.
pos: verb
examples: To hope that the Administration and Congress will become Anti-National Bank, and thereby expect something, is Micawbering in dread earnest.
... not growing a single spiritual inch, for putting forth his powers as a man should; just amiably Micawbering along, and most Micawberly devoted to somebody he would like well enough to marry when the times comes and things "turn up;" ....
He found his native land overcrowded with young men of education and refinement, in the same predicament as himself—waiting for something to turn up; and while he was thus “Micawbering,” he met Miss Mary Anderson at the Farm street church, and from her obtained an engagement to take a singing part in “Ingomar.”
No Indian, unless he has micawbered himself into self-complacency, would think 1973 a happy year, let alone a year of achievement.
Translations: