malkin

plural malkins · alternative maukin · alternative maulkin

1. archaicregionalA (stereotypical name for a) lower-class or uncultured woman; a kitchen maid; a slattern.First known use 13th c.

   We did but keep you surety for our son, / If this be he, — or a draggled mawkin, thou, / That tends her bristled grunters in the sludge[.]

   1849, Tennyson, Poems, volume 2, page 224

   1 more example

   Ȝe ne haue na more meryte · in masse ne in houres / Þan Malkyn of hire maydenhode · þat no man desireth. You gain no more merit from mass or your prayers / Than Malkin from her maidenhood, which no man desires.

   c. 1385, William Langland, Piers Plowman (Bodleian MS Laud Misc. 581), I

2. regionalA mop, especially one used to clean a baker's oven.First known use 15th c.

   1 more example

   "She had no sooner said so, but they all vanished saving onely one Peter Grospetter, whom a little after she saw snatch'd up into the aire, and to let fall his Maulkin (a stick that they make clean Ovens withall) and her self was also driven so forcibly with the wind, that it made her almost Lose her breath."

   1662, Henry More, An Antidote Against Atheism, Book III, A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More, p. 120

3. obsoletenauticalA mop or sponge attached to a jointed staff for swabbing out a cannon.First known use 19th c.
4. archaicregionalA scarecrow.First known use 16th c.

   [A] straw malkin like thee, which the very crows are not afraid to perch on[.]

   1866, Charles Kingsley, chapter 23, in Hereward the Wake, London: Nelson, page 321

5. archaicA cat.First known use 17th c.

   Now she was strong enough to walk and watch them circling in the sky or to sit in the arbour at the end of the long lawn and, with the sunlight smouldering in her dark-red hair and lying wanly over the area of her face and neck, watch the multiform and snow-white convolutions of her malkins.

   1946, Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, →OCLC

6. Northern EnglandScotlandA hare.First known use 18th c.

   There was milk punch and spiced whisky, a smell of goose and maukin roasting on the spit.

   1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin, published 2006, page 158

plural Malkins

1. A surname transferred from the given name.

   Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), a group that promotes conservatism on college campuses, has kicked one of its prominent speakers, Michelle Malkin, to the curb. […] YAF did exactly the right thing by disassociating itself from Malkin for coming to Fuentes’ defense.

   2019 November 20, Dexter Van Zile, “Right-Wing Holocaust Denial — in America”, in The Algemeiner, archived from the original on 17 Mar 2020