mullered

English

WOTD – 2 July 2024

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈmʊləd/, /ˈmʌl-/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈmʊləɹd/, /ˈmʌl-/
• Hyphenation: mull‧er‧ed

Etymology 1

From muller (“to destroy; to beat or thrash; to utterly defeat or outplay”) +‎ -ed (suffix forming past tense and past participle forms of regular verbs). Muller is probably derived from Angloromani mul-, the preterite stem of mer- (“to die”) (compare mullered, mullo (“dead”, adjective); ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *mer- (“to die; to disappear”)) + English -er (suffix forming frequentative verbs).

Adjective

mullered (comparative more mullered, superlative most mullered) (UK, slang)

1. Badly damaged or completely destroyed; ruined, trashed, wrecked.

   My car isn’t driveable at the moment: the clutch is totally mullered.

   • 2006, Cass Pennant, “Jela: West Ham United”, in Top Boys: Meet the Men behind the Mayhem, London: John Blake Publishing, →ISBN, page 401:

     The police couldn't really do what they had to do so a lot of Chelsea fans will remember that day because they got mullered and that is what counted.

   • 2012, Will Ellsworth-Jones, quoting Mark Ellis, “All Aboard for the Banksy Tour”, in Banksy: The Man behind the Wall, London: Aurum Press, published 2013, →ISBN, pages 84–85:

     I called Laurie, my daughter about it. I said, "You are not going to believe this, but there's a Banksy here." When she saw it she thought she'd won the Lottery. She said "Oh god, you've got to preserve it." It was in a dreadful state when we found it, absolutely mullered. Someone had already rollered over it. We cleaned it right up. We framed it. Put a bit of Perspex over it. Don't look too bad, does it?

   • 2020, Adam Frost, “Where to Grow”, in How I Garden: Easy Ideas & Inspiration for Making Beautiful Gardens Anywhere (Gardeners’ World), London: BBC Books, →ISBN, section “Microclimates”:

     I noticed that another phlomis, no more than 3m (10 ft) away from the wall got absolutely mullered while one near the wall did okay, and although it got a bit battered in places, once I'd pruned it, it was fine.

2. Drunk, inebriated.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:drunk

   Every Friday night we would go out and get completely mullered.

   • 2005, Joe Best, “My Fellow Travellers”, in I Wanna Go Again! Memories of Travel, Youth, Love and Camel Dung, Bracknell, Berkshire: Ascendere Publishing, →ISBN, part 1 (Sorting Our Lives Out):

     The other side of Rich, which helped balance him out, was that he loved going out and getting absolutely mullered, where he would totally lose the plot – Which I presume was a form of escapism from his carefully planned daily life.

   • 2006, Gordon Ramsay, “Getting Started”, in Humble Pie, London: HarperCollinsPublishers, →ISBN, pages 83–84:

     It was a Saturday night. We NEVER had a Saturday night off. So we went to the Hammersmith Palais and we got absolutely mullered. The next night, we all piled off to a pub called the Sussex.

   • 2017, Kelly Osbourne, “Dear London”, in There is No F*cking Secret: Letters from a Badass Bitch, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, →ISBN, page 70:

     On the rare occasion that we decided to stay in, Omar would cook, but it took so bloody long that by the time he finished, we were all mullered.

   • 2020, Rob[ert] Key, “Cry Me a River”, in ‘Oi, Key’: Tales of a Journeyman Cricketer, Barnsley, South Yorkshire; Philadelphia, Pa.: White Owl Books, Pen & Sword Books, →ISBN:

     At Christmas he told us, 'Right, I'll take you to the best bar in Adelaide – Crazy Horse.' […] Crazy Horse had become our regular Tuesday night haunt. […] [W]e couldn't go out on a Saturday and get mullered, so on a Tuesday, ahead of a slightly easier day on Wednesday, off we'd go to Crazy Horse.

3. (often sports) Of a sportsperson, a team, etc.: utterly defeated or outplayed; destroyed, thrashed, trounced.

   Synonym: outclassed

   • 2010, Tom English, quoting Jim Telfer, “Once More unto the Breach, Dear Friends, Once More”, in The Grudge: Scotland vs. England, 1990, London: Yellow Jersey Press, Random House, →ISBN, page 160:

     The papers were saying we were going to get mullered in the scrum. That's when the confidence started to grow. If they believe that, then that's good for us.

   • 2011, Alex Wheatle, “It’s All Red on the Night”, in Brenton Brown, London: Arcadia Books, published 2013, →ISBN, page 260:

     Looks like we're going to have a majority of around thirty, forty seats. I really can't wait to see [Jeremy] Paxman grilling the Tory top brass to explain their defeat. […] I better phone home and make sure that gets recorded. Mullered, they were, the Tory cunts. Absolutely mullered! Especially in London.

   • 2019, Laurel Kerr [pseudonym; Erin Laurel O’Brien], chapter 1, in Sweet Wild of Mine (Where the Wild Hearts Are; book 2), Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks Casablanca, →ISBN:

     Then she stuck her arms akimbo and delivered a look a mum would give to a lad who wanted to quit football just because his team got mullered.

Translations

badly damaged or completely destroyed — see destroyed,‎ wrecked

drunk, inebriated — see drunk,‎ inebriated

of a sportsperson, a team, etc.: utterly defeated or outplayed; destroyed, thrashed, trounced — see defeated

Verb

mullered

1. simple past and past participle of muller

Etymology 2

A variant of mouldered, from moulder (“to decay, rot”) +‎ -ed (suffix forming past tense and past participle forms of regular verbs). Moulder is derived from mould (“loose friable soil; rotting earth regarded as the substance of the human body”) + -er (suffix forming frequentative verbs), probably influenced by mould (“furry growth of fungi”); and mould is from Middle English mold, molde (“loose friable soil, dirt, earth; earth as the substance out of which God made man, and to which the human body decays into after death”), from Old English molde (“earth, soil”), from Proto-Germanic *muldō (“dirt, soil; furry growth of fungi, mould”), from Proto-Indo-European *melh₂- (“to crush, grind”).

Adjective

mullered (comparative more mullered, superlative most mullered)

1. (Scotland, obsolete) Synonym of mouldered (“turned to dust; crumbled, decayed, rotted”)
   • 1728 (date written), P[atrick] W[alker], “Preface”, in Some Remarkable Passages of the Life and Death of Mr. Alexander Peden, Late Minister of the Gospel at New Glenluce in Galloway. […], Pittsburgh, Pa.: […] [F]or Alexander M’Queen, by Robert Ferguson and Co., published 1815, →OCLC, page xxii:

     I have often thought in my melancholy days, these years bygone, that if it might be supposed, that the souls of our worthies were come from heaven, and the dust of their mullered bodies from their graves, and reunite again, […]

Further reading

• “mullered, adj.”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• Eric Partridge (2005) “mullered”, in Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, editors, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, volume 2 (J–Z), London, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 1338, column 1.