Many a little makes a mickle. Savvy?

[RealityChuck]

From Flanders and Swann

[Trinopus]

@Senegoid

Does anybody remember if Lewis Carroll parodied this phrase in one of his Alice books, which was later remarked upon by Martin Gardner in The Annotated Alice?

I’m sure I remember reading some mention of this in The Annotated Alice, but I can’t find anything on it now. Has someone else seen this?

I can’t think of anything in the Alice books… It’s been a while since I’ve read Gardner, but I don’t recall it there either. Maybe in Sylvie and Bruno? (If you think Alice’s adventures were weird…)

[Giles]

@Senegoid

Does anybody remember if Lewis Carroll parodied this phrase in one of his Alice books, which was later remarked upon by Martin Gardner in The Annotated Alice?

In chapter 9 of Alice in Wonderland, the Duchess says, “Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.” This is a parody of the English proverb, “Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves,” which makes rather more sense, and also has more or less the same meaning as the mickle/muckle proverb.

[Bam_Boo_Gut]

I know it as “every mickle makes a muckle” but I’m from down south.

[Eurograff]

@CalMeacham

I don’t recal where I first stumbled across mickle, but I recognized it when Tolkein used it in Michel Delving, a location in the Shire. Put into modern English, it means “Much Digging”, and obviously refers to a place with many Hobbit holes.

@Colophon

Or it could mean “Little Digging” - after all many a mickle (small amount) makes a muckle (large amount).

Confusingly, though, there seem to be two expressions. My dictionary gives two, completely opposite, meanings for the noun “mickle”:
:smack:

I’ve certainly only ever come across the second version, which implies a mickle is a small amount.

In Tolkien’s usage the word michel/micel/mickel/mickle certainly refers to large amounts. He was well aware of its origins. The (Old) English word mickle comes from a common Germanic root, which also leads to the word “much” (and maybe “mighty” too) and is present in the German name Mecklenburg and in the Viking name for Constantinople, Miklagard, which both mean “the great city”. This word form is also a cognate to other Indo-European words for big, such as Greek mega, Latin magna or Sanskrit maha. That in some English dialects this word has come to mean small amounts is probably just a result of some confusion concerning the actual meaning of an old and rarely used word.

[Autolycus]

And now you know the rest of the story.

[Qadgop_the_Mercotan]

Fearful were the chicken dwarves, yet mickle crafty too

[Regallag_The_Axe]

So that’s what the ghost pirate was talking about.

[Colophon]

@CalMeacham

Or it could mean “a great amount”, as the dictionareies I’ve consulted show.
Mickle - definition of mickle by The Free Dictionary

Er, yes - that’s what I said. There are two, completely opposite, definitions in my dictionary. A mickle is either a large amount or a small amount, and correspondingly the expression is either “many a little makes a mickle” or “many a mickle makes a muckle”. In the latter case, a muckle is defined as a large amount, even though it comes from the same root!

Growing up I had only ever heard the second expression, so it seems wrong to me that a mickle is a lot, even though by all accounts that is the correct one.

“Mickle” also appears in my same dictionary as an adjective or adverb, in both cases only in the “large or abundant” sense.

[Lasciel]

Actually, it can be made to work:

Many a little makes a mickle.
Many little bits makes a lot.

Many a mickle maks a muckle.
Many lots makes a truckload.