Dictionary

malkin en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ˈmɔːlkɪn/

Etymology

From Malde, an early form of Maude or Matilda + -kin (diminutive ending). Compare grimalkin.

Meanings

1. (archaic, regional) A (stereotypical name for a) lower-class or uncultured woman; a kitchenmaid; a slattern.
   • We did but keep you surety for our son, / If this be he, — or a draggled mawkin, thou, / That tends her bristled grunters in the sludge[.] 1849, Tennyson, Poems, volume 2, page 224:
   • Ȝe ne haue na more meryte · in masse ne in houres / Þan Malkyn of hire maydenhode · þat no man desireth. You gain no more merit from mass or your prayers / Than Malkin from her maidenhood, which no man desires. c. 1385, William Langland, Piers Plowman (Bodleian MS Laud Misc. 581), I
2. (regional) A mop, especially one used to clean a baker's oven.
   • "She had no sooner said so, but they all vanished saving onely one Peter Grospetter, whom a little after she saw snatch'd up into the aire, and to let fall his Maulkin (a stick that they make clean Ovens withall) and her self was also driven so forcibly with the wind, that it made her almost Lose her breath." 1662, Henry More, An Antidote Against Atheism, Book III, A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More, p. 120
3. (obsolete) A mop or sponge attached to a jointed staff for swabbing out a cannon.
4. (archaic, regional) A scarecrow.
   • [A] straw malkin like thee, which the very crows are not afraid to perch on[.] 1866, Charles Kingsley, chapter 23, in Hereward the Wake, London: Nelson, page 321:
5. (archaic) A cat.
   • Now she was strong enough to walk and watch them circling in the sky or to sit in the arbour at the end of the long lawn and, with the sunlight smouldering in her dark-red hair and lying wanly over the area of her face and neck, watch the multiform and snow-white convolutions of her malkins. 1946, Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, →OCLC:
6. (Northern-England, Scotland) A hare.
   • There was milk punch and spiced whisky, a smell of goose and maukin roasting on the spit. 1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin, published 2006, page 158:

Forms

Translations (1)

pl baba (lower-class or uncultured woman)