Stop Meckling Around

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Carol Kenney calling from King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

Hey, Carol, it’s good to have you. What’s on your mind?

Well, I have a mysterious word. The word is meckle or meckling. I’ve used that my whole life, and my brother says he remembers our mother talking about things with that word. And I don’t know anybody else who’s ever heard or used that word. I’ve looked it up. I, you know, of course, gone to the Internet and done my due diligence. And I don’t know why that word, which is kind of unique, it seems, to my family, meckle. I would spell it M-E-C-K-L-E. And the way my mom used it was kind of as a synonym for messing around with something. Like as a kid, I would mess around with my cereal in my cereal bowl. And she would say, stop meckling with your cereal and eat it. She would also use it in the context of maybe doing some kind of a sewing project, which had a lot of complicated steps. Or a knitting project or any kind of project that had a lot of steps to it. And she would say, oh, I gave up on that. There was too much meckling involved.

So have you ever heard the word or can you give any insight? The one thing I would say is that my mom’s family came from a German background in New York, in Long Island, Brooklyn, and Queens.

So, Carol, German by heritage, but not by birth?

Right. Her grandparents spoke German naturally. They were German by birth. And just to make sure that we’re hearing you correctly, when you spelled it, that first letter M as in Maria, right?

Yes, correct. M-E-C-K-L-E, Mechel?

Yeah, I’m inventing the spelling because I can’t find it anywhere else.

Right. I’m not 100% sure on this, but I think we have a connection here. There’s a tenuous connection to two verbs or three verbs, one each in German, Yiddish, and Dutch. And they’re all basically the same word represented in each language. And it’s mekern, M-E-K-E-R-N in Yiddish or M-E-C-K-E-R-N in German and double K in Dutch. And just bear with me here. But the thing about this verb is it really means to bleat like a sheep bleats, but it’s used figuratively or euphemistically to mean to complain or grumble or to moan and complain. And I’m just wondering if it didn’t go one step further beyond that at some part, because we have this word fuss in English that has these two meanings. One is about complaining, but other one is about tinkering or overhandling or having to do a lot of fiddly stuff. And I’m just wondering if this word from German or Yiddish or Dutch also made that leap over from, you know, because if you’re complaining or grumbling about something, it’s often because it is complicated or requires a lot of fussy work.

Mm—

Mm—

So that’s my thinking. Maybe that’s it.

Yeah. And so then you have these, you of course have meckerer, somebody who meckers is a grumbler, a complainer. And just this phonological and semantic connection is pretty strong here. I’d put my chances of being right, let’s say, under 75%, but I still think it’s pretty strong.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it’s a nice family word, and I appreciate you sharing that with us. And if it turns out that it’s just your mom’s word, well, that doesn’t take anything away from its usefulness.

Yeah, I really like it.

I do, too. And I’m transmitting it, of course, to my kids and my four grandkids. So maybe it will spread and someday be in a dictionary. That’s how it starts.

Excellent. Carol, thank you so much for spending some time with us. We really appreciate it.

Thanks. Thank you for trying to solve my mystery.

Yeah, sure. Take care now.

Bye-bye. Have a great day.

Bye. Bye-bye.

Well, if there’s a family word that you’ve been wondering about, we might be able to help. So give us a call, 877-929-9673.