Entry · catalog no. 3014
mug man
/ /ˈmʌɡ ˌmæn/ /MUG MAN
noun · Harlem, NYC · 1940s
✓ Verified
1.
A petty strongarm: a man who made his living by intimidation and never rose above the corner. The term carries a dismissal in it — the size of the threat is being measured, and found small.
“He talked like a boss and collected like a mug man, and everybody on the block knew which one he was.”
Origin & Attribution
Black Harlem street speech of the 1930s and early 1940s, recorded by Zora Neale Hurston — a novelist with a folklorist's training — in the glossary she appended to "Story in Harlem Slang" for the American Mercury in July 1942. Hurston documented it; she did not coin it. It sits on the older American slang mug, a thug or violent man, attested through the 1930s. Worth noting that Hurston was glossing for a white magazine readership, and made choices about what to include and how to explain it.
1942
July — published in Hurston''s Glossary of Harlem Slang, appended to Story in Harlem Slang in the American Mercury
1995
Reprinted in the Library of America edition of Hurston''s Novels and Stories, the text slang lexicographers now cite
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Harlem, NYC · 1940s
Spoken by
Harlem street speech of the 1930s and 1940s
$MUGMANThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Fading84 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
28/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1942
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
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Citations & Sources
■
Glossary of Harlem Slang, Zora Neale Hurston — appended to Story in Harlem Slang, American Mercury · July 1942
archive-desk
■
+ Cite a sourceZora Neale Hurston: Novels and Stories — Library of America, p. 1009 · 1995
archive-desk
See also