Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The Australian magpie-lark, Grallina picata, named from its large and elaborately built mud nest.
- noun A mudder (which see).
- noun A man who cleans out common sewers. or any one who fishes up small articles from the mud on the strands of tidal rivers.
- noun A neglected or deserted child, who is allowed to run and play about the streets, picking up his living and his training anyhow; a street Arab; a gamin.
- noun A kind of pipit
Etymologies
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Examples
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The tide had been at the flood when the book disappeared, and when it ebbed, the offending volume was found by a little mud-lark imbedded in the refuse of the river.
Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti Hall Caine 1892
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"All right, my young mud-lark," replied the Captain.
"Forward, March" A Tale of the Spanish-American War Kirk Munroe 1890
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He'd have to mud-lark just the same, but he'd have more to eat and no beatings, and he'd always hung to me from the time he was born.
Prisoners of Poverty Abroad Helen Campbell 1878
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Up to five, say, they must be fed and housed somehow, but from five on a boy of any spirit ought to begin a career as mud-lark to graduate from it in time into anything for which this foundation had fitted him.
Prisoners of Poverty Abroad Helen Campbell 1878
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Nothing, however, was settled; and Bill continued to mud-lark, catch fish, run errands, look after boats, and hold gentlemen's horses, till he was getting to be a big lad.
Sunshine Bill William Henry Giles Kingston 1847
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Struck up a jilt so gaily O. "_Kim ap_ -- be after sitting fast in the front there, old Mapps, or you'll make a mud-lark of yourself."
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_mud-lark_; that is, a plunderer of the ships 'cargoes that unload in the Thames.
Tales and Novels — Volume 02 Maria Edgeworth 1808
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The mud-lark returns home, when his labours are ended, sorts the indiscriminate heterogeneous "mass of matter," and disposes of it as well as he can. "{
chained_bear commented on the word mud-lark
"Beside them fluttered the mud-larks, often children, dressed in tatters and content to scavenge all the waste that the toshers rejected as below their standards: lumps of coal, old wood, scraps of rope."
—Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map (New York: Penguin, 2006), 2
October 1, 2008
reesetee commented on the word mud-lark
Ooh! You're reading a great book! Let us know what you think. :-)
October 1, 2008