mooch
/ˈmuːt͡ʃ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.43 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Near-synonyms: loiter, roam"
- "These chaps that mooch about, as Hyde was doing, pick up all sorts of odds and ends. He may have pinched them from a chemist’s shop."
- "You have to be alone to mooch about properly. Other people will just get in the way and be all energetic about things. So wait until they've gone, make a cup of tea and then let the mooching commence."
- "With 79 minutes gone, the most celebrated team of the modern age had been reduced to bunch of mooching, stumbling yellow-shirted spectators."
- "A handful of camera crews mooched around the entrance to the Giorgio Cini foundation, where a pair of tight-lipped but polite individuals sat before monitors under a gazebo and politely fended off requests for information."
- "I managed to mooch my way up the journalistic ladder to the next, more impressive level of “Interviewer”."
Etymology
From Middle English moochen, mouchen (“to pretend poverty”), from Old French muchier, mucier, mucer (“to skulk, hide, conceal”), from Frankish *mukkjan (“to hide, conceal oneself”), from Proto-Germanic *mukjaną, *mūkōną (“to hide, ambush”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)mūg-, *(s)mewgʰ- (“swindler, thief”). Cognate with Old High German mūhhōn (“to store, cache, plunder”), Middle High German muchen, mucken (“to hide, stash”), Middle English müchen, michen (“to rob, steal, pilfer”). More at mitch. Alternate etymology derives mooch from Middle English mucchen (“to hoard, be stingy”, literally “to hide coins in one's nightcap”), from Middle English mucche (“nightcap”), from Middle Dutch mutse (“cap, nightcap”), from Medieval Latin almucia (“nightcap”), of unknown origin, possibly Arabic. More at mutch, amice.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: moochen, muchier, *mukkjan, *mūk-, *(s)mūg-, mucchen
Usage
- British usage
- Colloquial
- Transitive verb
- American usage
- Humorous
- Slang