"Hugger-mugger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... night. The carts, carrying the quick and the dead, rumbled by in a long convoy, the drooping heads of the soldiers turned neither to the right nor to the left for any greeting with old friends; there was a hugger-mugger of uniforms on provision carts and ambulances. It was a part of the wreckage and wastage of the war, and to the onlooker, exaggerating unconsciously the importance of the things close at hand and visible, it seemed terrible in its significance, and an ominous ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... which there is often in these and in others still current among us. But of the same sort what vast numbers have fallen out of use, some so fallen out of all remembrance that it may be difficult almost to find credence for them. Thus take of rhyming the following: 'hugger-mugger', 'hurly-burly', 'kicksy-wicksy' (all in Shakespeare); 'hibber-gibber', 'rusty-dusty', 'horrel-lorrel', 'slaump paump' (all in Gabriel Harvey), 'royster-doyster' (Old Play), 'hoddy-doddy' (Ben Jonson); while of alliterative ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... reference to all that they have in the world, have a part property in it. They make it what it is, and will not make it what it should be, unless in their hearts they are proud of it. "You know he can't be the real squire," said one old farmer to Mr. Walker. "They may hugger-mugger it this way and that; but this Mr. Ralph can't be like ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... the New Yorker a hugger-mugger with his money. He does not hide up his dollars in old stockings and keep rolls of gold in hidden pots. He does not even invest it where it will not grow but only produce small though sure fruit. He builds houses, he speculates largely, he spreads ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... the child. His father was at the Marshalsea. But his mother and brothers and sisters were, to use his own words, "still encamped, with a young servant girl from Chatham workhouse, in the two parlours in the emptied house in Gower Street North." And there he lived with them, in much "hugger-mugger," merely taking his humble midday meal in nomadic fashion, on his own account. Soon, however, his position became even more forlorn. The paternal creditors proved insatiable. The gipsy home in Gower Street had to be broken up. Mrs. Dickens and the children ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... and other old writers. The etymology is uncertain. Compare Jamieson in Hudge-mudge. The latter part of the word seems to be allied with smuggle, and the former part to be the reduplication. The original and proper sense of hugger-mugger is secretly. See Nares in v., who derives it from to hugger, to lurk about; but query whether such a word can be shown to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... of their living in two rooms. Violet, who had lived in one room, said that living in two rooms was horrible, and Mrs. Usher said that Violet was right. It was better for all parties to begin as you meant to go on. Begin in hugger-mugger and you may end in it. But if he gave Violet a home of her own that was a home at the very start, she'd soon settle down in it. He needn't worry about the hard work it meant. The only thing that would keep Violet steadylike was downright hard work. No; she didn't mean anything cruel. They could ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... Spenser, Shakspeare, and other old writers. The etymology is uncertain. Compare Jamieson in Hudge-mudge. The latter part of the word seems to be allied with smuggle, and the former part to be the reduplication. The original and proper sense of hugger-mugger is secretly. See Nares in v., who derives it from to hugger, to lurk about; but query whether such a word can ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various |
