Definition 1: Much, a great many, a large amount; large, great (Scots English).

Usage 1: Usage of today's word tapered off over the course of the 20th Century even in its last stronghold, Scotland, always the land of fascinating words. An older variant of this word is "mickle." In the Eve of St. Agnes (xiv) Keats pleads, "Let me laugh awhile, I've mickle time to grieve." Most Scots today would probably prefer using "muckle," as did Frank Kippax as recently as 1992 in The Butcher's Bill: "The Home Guard barged in and waved a muckle pistol in his face."

Suggested usage: Today our word is heard mostly in the idiom, "Many a mickle mak's a muckle," meaning roughly "a lot of littles make a lot," an encouragement to save for a rainy day. This idiomatic (unpredictable) phrase seems contradictory and probably is a corruption of "Many a little mak's a muckle," suggesting the Scots themselves are letting this quaintly old fashioned word slip away. Still and again, J. D. Salinger wrote in Catcher in the Rye (1951), Chapter 11, that Jane Gallagher "was sort of muckle-mouthed" because when she talked excitedly "her mouth sort of went in about fifty directions."

Etymology: The origin of today's word is a prominent root *meg- "great, large" found in some form in almost every Indo-European language. It ended up (also) as "much" in English but we find it in Norwegian and Danish meget "very (much)" and Swedish mycken "much," as well. The ancient Greek cognate is megas "great," borrowed in all the English words on "mega": "megastar," "megaton," "megabyte." It also underlies megalomania "delusions of wealth and power." In Armenian it became mec "great" and in Albanian, madh "great." Sanskrit maha "great" is used in several words borrowed into English, including mahatma as in Mahatma Gandhi, maharishi "great seer," an eminent spiritual teacher, and maha raja "great king," which also includes "raja," a relative of "royal" and French roi "king."