hugger-mugger
[huhg-er-muhg-er]
- disorder or confusion; muddle.
- secrecy; reticence: Why is there such hugger-mugger about the scheme?
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- secret or clandestine.
- disorderly or confused.
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- to keep secret or concealed; hush up.
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- to act secretly.
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Origin of hugger-mugger
1520–30; earlier hucker-mucker, rhyming compound based on mucker, Middle English mokeren to hoard
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for hugger-mugger
Historical Examples
Let alone his meals being all hugger-mugger and comfortless.
Mary BartonElizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Muddle flies before it, and hugger-mugger becomes a thing unknown.
CharacterSamuel Smiles
Mr Bethany tossed the hugger-mugger of pamphlets across the table.
The ReturnWalter de la Mare
The trouble was his “hugger-mugger” management, as Carlyle expressed it.
Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and KeatsBarnette Miller
All that set you were brought up in—why, one only had to look at them to see what a hugger-mugger way they probably lived.
VeraElisabeth von Arnim
hugger-mugger
- confusion
- rare secrecy
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- with secrecy
- in confusion
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- (tr) to keep secret
- (intr) to act secretly
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Word Origin
C16: of uncertain origin
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for hugger-mugger
also huggermugger, "secretly," 1520s, one of a number of similar-sounding reduplicated words in use around this time and meaning much the same thing, including hucker-mucker, which may be the original of the bunch if the root is, as some think, Middle English mukre "to hoard up, conceal." Also cf. Middle English hukmuck, late 15c., name of some sort of device for cleansing.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper