Other forms: mucking, mucked
Muck is dirt, mud and animal waste. Covered in muck, muck out the stable, spread muck on the field.
On a farm it is manure, and mucking out is cleaning a stable, which is a daily job. In general use it is any unpleasant dirt. Muck about and muck around mean to waste time or behave foolishly, and muck in means to help with shared work — both very British. Note where there is muck there is brass, a Yorkshire saying meaning dirty trades make money.
1nounmuckDirt, mud and animal waste.
“Take your boots off; they're covered in muck from the farmyard.”
2verbtimeTo waste time, or to help with shared work.
“Stop mucking about and get on with your homework!”
muck is dirt.
Old Norse myki meant dung, and English took it directly. The word has meant the same thing for a thousand years and has never once been polite.
Middle English
muk
English, today
muck
Built from
From Middle English muk. From Middle English mok, muk, from Old Norse myki, mykr (“dung”) or less likely Old English moc, moce (in hlōsmoc (“pigsty dung”) and lustmoce (“lady's smock (Cardamine pratensis)”)) (compare Icelandic mykja and Danish møg ("dung")), from Proto-Germanic mukį̄ (“dung; manure”), from Proto-Germanic muk-, from Proto-Indo-European (s)mewg-, mewk- (“slick, slippery”) (compare Welsh mign (“swamp”), Latin mūcus (“snot”), mucere (“to be moldy or musty”), Latvian mukls (“swampy”), Albanian myk (“mould”), Ancient Greek μύξα (“mucus, lamp wick”), Ancient Greek μύκης (“mushroom”), German Mauke (“mud fever”)), from *(s)mewg, mewk 'to slip'. More at meek.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA