“Toby jug,” made by Ralph Wood, c. 1782–95.
26 August 2023
Mug is a word that has undergone a number of semantic shifts, or changes in meaning, over the centuries. So much so that today one wonders what connection, if any, there is between the drinking vessel and getting robbed or a person’s face or the photograph taken upon a person’s arrest.
The first known use of mug in English dates to 1400 and it is used in the sense of a dry measure, in this particular case a measure of salt. The etymology of mug is not known; there are cognates in other Germanic languages, but relationship these different words have to one another is uncertain.
By the early sixteenth century mug was being used to refer to large pieces of crockery, and by the middle of the seventeenth century we see the sense that we know today of a large drinking vessel with a handle. From Charles Cotton 1664 mock epic Scarronides, based on Virgil’s Aeneid, where Dido raises a mug in a toast to Aeneas:
Up from her Chayre Queen Dido starts,
And takes a Mug, that held Two Quarts
Of Drink, that she with much forbearing
Had sav'd long since for her Sheep-shearing:
And thus begins, Here Sirs, here's to you,
And from my heart much good may do you
In the eighteenth century, mug was being used as a slang word for a person’s face. How this sense arose is not certain, but it may be from the grotesque faces that often appeared on earthenware drinking vessels of the era. Alternatively, etymologist Anatoly Liberman suggests that the Scots murgeon, meaning grimace, may be the source of this sense of mug. But both of these suggestions must be labeled with “perhaps.”
The sense of mug meaning face appears as early as 1708 in the humorous newspaper the British Apollo. This passage appears in a supposed letter from a woman asking advice about which of her suitors to marry:
Three persons making their addresses to me, a captain, a lawyer, and a merchant; I have enquir’d after their personal estates, for they despise real ones: my captain has his commission in his pocket, which scorns to keep company with any gold there. My Lawyer has a desk, nine law-books without covers, two with covers, a temple mug, and the hopes of being a Judge. My merchant has a vast estate, tho’ at that distance that I have never heard of besides, who have ever travell’d to those parts.
The editors of the British Apollo demur in giving an answer, but instead consult the “Oracle of Apollo,” which responds with some lines of verse that describe the risks of each choice but do not offer any actionable advice. The temple here refers to the Inns of Court near Temple Church in London which contain barristers’ chambers and solicitors’ offices. A man with a temple-mug would have the countenance expected of a lawyer.
And from this sense of mug meaning face we get mug shot, the photograph of a person who has been arrested. Mug shot arose in American police jargon in the first half of the twentieth century. We see its development in this Indiana newspaper article from 20 December 1911. The noun phrase isn’t yet in place, but we can see that it is coming:
Sergeant Weifenbach characterizes them as the toughest mugs that he has ever had to deal with. They spend their time in cursing and annoying the other prisoners. Captain Evans of the Chicago department[t,] head of the bureau of identification, has asked the local authorities to have their “mugs shot,” and accordingly a photographer has been engaged to get pictures of the criminals.
The verb phrase have one’s mug shot, meaning to have one’s portrait photographed, appears in various contexts after this, not all having to do with police procedures. But we don’t see the noun phrase mug shot for a couple of decades. From Iowa’s Des Moines Register of 5 July 1936:
Of course there are many other wanted men in the thousands of files of the bureau. There are “mug” shots, or pictures, and identifications and criminal records of hundreds who are sought for poultry theft, car stealing, larceny, forgery, farm implement and produce theft, rape, arson and so on down the long list of crimes.
Along another path of the word’s development, by the early nineteenth-century mug had become a slang verb in the boxing community that meant to strike an opponent in the face. And by 1864 J. C. Hotten’s Slang Dictionary recorded the verb as meaning to rob someone:
MUG, to strike in the face, or fight. Also to rob by the garrote.
So the sense transferred from the face, to striking someone in the face, to robbing someone by striking or threatening to strike them. At about the same time the noun mugger, meaning a robber, also appears.
There are various other senses of mugger. The use of the word to mean a dealer or tinker in crockery dates to 1743. Mugger is nineteenth century British schoolboy slang for a diligent student, what we might now term a nerd or grind. The name for the mugger crocodile, native to India, appears by 1844. This name is unrelated to the other mugs and muggers, coming from the Hindi magar, meaning crocodile.
Sources:
British Apollo, third edition, vol. 1 of 3. London: Theodore Sanders and Arthur Bettesworth, 1726, 8. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Cotton, Charles. Scarronides. London: E. Cotes for Henry Brome, 1664, 107. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, 1971, s.v. murgeo(u)n, n. Dictionaries of the Scots Language.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2023, s.v. mug, n.1, mug, v.1, mug shot, n. Note: Green’s has a quotation for the noun phrase mug shot from 1912, but this is actually an instance of the verb phrase, to have one’s mug shot.
Hotten, John Camden. The Slang Dictionary. London: 1864, 183, s.v. mug, v. Archive.org.
Liberman, Anatoly. An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 2008, s.v. mooch,164.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. mug, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2003, s.v. mug, n.1, mug, n.3., mugger, n.2., mugger, n.1., mugger, n.5., mugger, n.3., mug shot, n.
“Police Capture Hamilton and Pal Without a Shot” (photo caption). Dallas Morning News (Texas), 22 August 1938, 1/3–4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Scottish National Dictionary, 1965, s.v. murgeon, n., v. Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL).
Spry, Dick. “Seven Iowa Public Enemies Still Evade Dragnet of Law Agencies.” Des Moines Register (Iowa), 5 July 1936, Iowa News 4/1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“Toughs Finally Landed,” Lake County Times (Hammond, Indiana), 20 December 1911, 4/1. Newspapers.com.
Photo credit: Andreas Praefcke, 2011. Wikimedia Commons. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, C.42-1955. Public domain image.