[Ads-l] to mean-mug

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Sat Feb 13 15:45:49 UTC 2021


"Mean-mug" is brand-new to me.

Urban Dictionary has cites, incl. hiphop lyrics, from 2010. I doubt it's
much older.

Everybody knows about "mugging for the camera."

JL




On Sat, Feb 13, 2021 at 10:24 AM Stanton McCandlish <smccandlish at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I only first encountered this last year, though I wonder if goes back a
> long way, since "mug" for 'face' is very old-school, and mostly only seems
> to survive otherwise in the phrase "mug shot".
>
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 12, 2021 at 8:45 AM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Quora.com:
> >
> > "So you know, all the Wehrmacht would have to do is roll up and mean mug
> > the commies, and the entire USSR would fall apart."
> >
> > Wiktionary: "(African-American Vernacular, transitive) To shoot a dirty
> > look at someone; to express hostility or menace towards someone through a
> > dirty look."
> >
> > JL
> > --
> >
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list