muck
Americannoun
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moist farmyard dung, decaying vegetable matter, etc.; manure.
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a highly organic, dark or black soil, less than 50 percent combustible, often used as a manure.
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mire; mud.
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filth, dirt, or slime.
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defamatory or sullying remarks.
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a state of chaos or confusion.
to make a muck of things.
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Chiefly British Informal. something of no value; trash.
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(especially in mining) earth, rock, or other useless matter to be removed in order to get out the mineral or other substances sought.
verb (used with object)
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mucks,
present (3rd person singular)
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mucked,
past participle, past
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mucking
present participle
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to manure.
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to make dirty; soil.
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to remove muck from (sometimes followed byout ).
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Informal.
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to ruin; bungle (often followed byup ).
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to put into a state of complete confusion (often followed byup ).
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verb phrase
noun
verb
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to spread manure upon (fields, gardens, etc)
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to soil or pollute
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(often foll by out) to clear muck from
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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mucksimple
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muckssimple
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have muckedperfect
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has muckedperfect
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am muckingprogressive
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are muckingprogressive
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is muckingprogressive
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have been muckingperfect progressive
-
has been muckingperfect progressive
Past
-
muckedsimple
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had muckedperfect
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was muckingprogressive
-
were muckingprogressive
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had been muckingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of muck
1200–50; Middle English muc, muk < Old Norse myki cow dung
Explanation
Muck is a goopy, muddy substance, like the muck at the bottom of a pond or the muck you clean out of the gutters on your house once a year. You can also use muck to mean animal manure, its original, 13th-century meaning — specifically, "cow dung and vegetable matter used as manure." The definition has expanded since then to include any number of dirty, slimy substances, from the mud on the bottom of a lake to the sludge in a flooded basement. As a verb, to muck is either to remove animal waste or to spread manure on a field.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
A school that can’t keep itself out of football controversy is back in the muck.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026
Here’s another running bit that would be so easy to muck up or exploit.
From Salon ● Jul. 12, 2026
But while his mates relax, he and his brother muck out the prize calves they are preparing for the Royal Bath & West Show.
From BBC ● May 27, 2026
If sweeping appeals to our collective empathy have failed to resonate—if the public is not moved by Randy Fine’s intersectional shortcomings—maybe we are better off getting down in the muck.
From Slate ● Feb. 12, 2026
All seven heads shot add, and the elm melted into a steaming pool of muck.
From "The Sea of Monsters" by Rick Riordan
The film "mucks up Orwell", according to the Wall Street Journal,, external who surmised: "As comedy, the movie is feeble, and as allegory for the socioeconomically literate it is heavy-handed."
From BBC ● Jul. 13, 2026
Whether one mucks in for the full ride or just appreciates the concept, duration is part of the art.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2024
Even though tennis industry officials and country club muckety mucks wrote dress codes that outlawed shorts, many women refused to adhere to the rules and continued showing up to play wearing them.
From Salon ● Sep. 7, 2018
That makes teams more inclined to take penalties, which further mucks up games.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 18, 2018
In discussing pasturage it will be convenient to recognize three types of lands, namely, piney woods, prairie, and mucks, realizing, of course, that this is a very rough classification.
From Florida: An Ideal Cattle State by Florida State Live Stock Association
In a day of action at Syston Brook, volunteers mucked in to shovel "absolutely solid" silt out of the concrete-bottomed channel, which was then removed by the Environment Agency.
From BBC ● Aug. 3, 2026
These shows are much more vital when the cast stops fighting or toiling in the same drama they’ve been mucked in for years.
From Salon ● Mar. 5, 2025
That’s the way nature designed it and how it worked for thousands of years until humans mucked it up — mostly as we overpopulated California after World War II.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 29, 2024
The dark meat wasn’t mucked with much, just the taste of fatty meat with salt, so you get a clean, succulent bite of the best part of the turkey.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 16, 2023
Other times he ran messages, stood at guard, mucked out stables, fletched arrows, assisted Maester Aemon with his birds or Bowen Marsh with his counts and inventories.
From "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin
But the journey from two teenagers "mucking about with plasticine" to an Oscar-winning animation powerhouse has often hinged on chance decisions, practical compromises and creative instinct.
From BBC ● Sep. 4, 2026
Proponents like Liverpool owner John Henry wound up apologizing for mucking with the product.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 31, 2026
"She was a great lady, very kind," he said, adding that "if you asked her a question, you'd get an answer - no mucking about".
From BBC ● Jul. 11, 2026
He also examined the history of those peculiar twists and turns on the city perimeter, mucking through L.A.’s long-simmering stew of real estate grabs, water politics and annexation schemes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 25, 2025
Now I just need to keep Lizzie from mucking it up for me.
From "The Bletchley Riddle" by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
