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Sunday Word: Mudlark
Apr. 13th, 2025 10:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sallymnmudlark [muhd-lahrk]
noun:
1a Chiefly British. a person who gains a livelihood by searching for iron, coal, old ropes, etc., in mud or low tide
1b someone who scavenges the banks and shores of rivers for items of value
2 Chiefly British Informal. a street urchin
3 either of two black and white birds, Grallina cyanoleuca, of Australia, or G. bruijni, of New Guinea, that builds a large, mud nest
(click to enlarge)
verb:
to play, dig, or search in mud or on muddy ground
Examples:
Mudlarking's popularity has grown steadily in recent years, driven in part by social media communities where enthusiasts share their finds, and tour groups that offer a trudge through the shards of history's castoffs (Megan Specia, Mudlarks Scour the Thames to Uncover 2,000 Years of Secrets, The New York Times, February 2020)
On a freezing January day during the recent cold snap, those walking along The Weirs might have been surprised to see Jane Eastman - Winchester's premier mudlark - waist-deep in the Itchen, bent double as she scoured the riverbed not so much for treasure, as trash. (Sebastian Haw, Hampshire mudlark looks for treasure and trash in Itchen, Hampshire Chronicle, January 2025)
Thames mud - damp and oxygen-free - is a 'magical preserver', Maiklem writes, and extracting an object from its embrace takes care, skill and an extraordinary level of patience, from both the mudlark and those who share her household. (Joanna Scutts, Unearthing London's history from a muddy riverbank, The Washington Post, December 2019)
"It always makes me smile, how emphatically people say, 'the piping shrike — that's the mudlark, we call it the mudlark' … and just how powerfully this myth has stuck," he said. (Daniel Keane, Magpies, magpie-larks and the striking mystery of South Australia's piping shrike, ABC News, March 2024)
Origin:
The first published use of the word was in 1785 as a slang term meaning 'a hog'. Its origin may have been a humorous variation on 'skylark'. By 1796, the word was also being used to describe "Men and boys ... who prowl about, and watch under the ships when the tide will permit." Mudlarks made a living in London in the 18th and 19th centuries by scouring the muddy shores of the River Thames for anything and everything that could be sold to eke out a living. This could include pilfering from river traffic. Modern mudlarks have sometimes recovered objects of archaeological value from the river's shores. These are either recorded as treasure under the Treasure Act of 1996 or submitted for analysis and review under the Portable Antiquities Scheme. (Word Genius)
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