mug's game

English

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Noun

mug's game (plural mugs' games)

1. (idiomatic) A foolish, profitless, or hopeless undertaking.
   • 1956, Anthony Burgess, Time for a Tiger (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 109:

     ‘It's a mug's game,’ said Crabbe.

   • 1988 May 20, Strobe Talbot, “Inside Moves”, in Time:

     The sheer destructiveness of nuclear weapons makes the quest for defenses a mug's game.

   • 2012, David Stevenson, FT Guide to Exchange Traded Funds and Index Funds:

     Although they aspired, like all natural-born gamblers, to taking a flutter and beating that system (they all loved the idea of tips, of course), they were sufficiently cynical to know it's a mug's game and that it was largely bound to fail.

Translations

A foolish, profitless, or hopeless undertaking.

• Dutch: gekkenwerk (nl) n, zinloze bezigheid f

References

• “mug's game”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
• "mug's game" at Rhymezone (Datamuse, 2006)
• Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (1989)