Mystery of "mungo" (from Van Lingle Mungo?)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 04:32:45 EST, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

>I was looking for "san man" and spotted a "mungo."
>...
>The HDAS has "mongo {orig. unk.]." There are citations from 1985 and
>1995, and both involve Brooklyn.
>...
>Grant Barrett made a "mongo" entry on Double-Tongued Word Wrester. He
>noted that the term was spotted as "mungo" in the 1938 WPA Lexicon of
>Trade Jargon.
>...
>I think this may answer the question. If the term is "mungo," and if
>it's from the 1930s, and if it's from Brooklyn, all signs point to a
>spread from the Brooklyn Dodger pitcher Van Lingle Mungo.

Why couldn't it have derived from "mung" = 'mixture, mess; messy
substance'?  This is the presumed origin for "mungo" = 'cheap fabric made
from waste wool and rags'.

But I can see how the local presence of a colorfully named pitcher could
have influenced the "-o" formation.  (Encarta suggests that the fabric
sense of "mungo" may have been formed "on the model of the Scottish
forename Mungo".)

The earliest cite I can find for the salvaging sense of "mungo" is from
1963...

-----
New York Times, May 30, 1963, p. 14
A Sanitation foreman found $6,000 worth of mungo yesterday. Mungo is the
sanitation workers' term for salvageable items found in refuse.
-----
New York Times, Jan 2, 1972, p. 13
Among the scuba enthusiasts are a group known as Mungo divers, whom Mr.
Miranda described as seagoing scavengers who search for copper and brass
to sell to junk dealers.
-----
New York Times, May 24, 1974, p. 29
The men said that one reason the bulk collection was so meager was that
"mungo-pickers" (slang for scavengers) had carted off the good furniture
the night before.
-----
New York Times, Jul 21, 1977, p. 50
Jason Martinelli's idea of a night on the town is to jump into his
mungo-picking outfit, jump into a commodious refuse bin, and just root
around in there collecting "fantastic, free, found material" with which to
decorate his apartment. In a word, garbage. To Mr. Martinelli and others
in the city's subculture of scavengers the term is "mungo," however and
the picking is easy-- once you know the rules.
-----


--Ben Zimmer