The Language Log on "mung"

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Mung" is in HDAS 2.  The definition I heard at NYU thirty-plus years ago was horribly similar to that below except less detailed and involving a gorilla.  The guy who told me had, I believe, learned all about it in at a Greek-letter fraternity at the University of Connecticut.

  American folklore. It ain't just "Go Tell Aunt Rhody."

  JL

Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: The Language Log on "mung"
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LL URL



The word "mung" with accompanying disgusting definition has been
around at least since I was a teener in the 'Fifties. The definition
that I know is as follows:

Take a pregnant, female mandrill baboon that is as close as possible
to giving birth without actually going into labor or whatever it is
that such baboons do.

Wrap the baboon tightly, birth canal down, in cheesecloth and hang it
from a convenient tree limb.

With baseball bats or other club-like instruments, carefully beat the
baboon to death, so as not to break either bones or skin.

Allow the dead baboon to ferment.

After the fermentation process has proceeded to a certain,
unpredictable point in time, a liquid will be seen to ooze from the
baboon's birth canal.

That liquid is _mung_.

However, I must admit that the twentieth-century gag reflex was
clearly somewhat stronger than that of the twenty-first century. I
don't recall that there were ever any suggestions as to what might be
done with the mung, once that it had been made.

-Wilson Gray

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