Mulligrubs
A fit of sulks, low spirits, or bad temper. Always with 'the' ('she has the mulligrubs'). In older usage also a vague stomach complaint or colic. In South Armagh, used for a general sense of distaste or being put-off, close to the modern English 'the ick'.
Etymology
An old dialect compound from late sixteenth-century English, origin unknown. The Scots form 'molligrups' or 'molligrubs' is well attested and is the most likely route into Ulster speech. The American 'mulligrubs' is recorded across the Appalachian and southern dialect zones, also via Scots-Irish migration. Not Irish-derived: the word's Gaelic-Irish ancestry is absent, and its survival in Ireland is best understood as an Ulster Scots inheritance with some local reshaping.
In a sentence
"He's been in the mulligrubs all morning - leave him be."
Historical notes
Mulligrubs is one of those words that survives in dialect long after standard English has dropped it. The older sense (a stomach upset, colic, the gripes) faded with the rise of clinical vocabulary; the surviving sense (sulks, low spirits) sits in the cluster of words for mild bad humour that no modern English term quite replaces. The South Armagh extension to mean a general distaste - the feeling of being put-off by something or someone - is locally robust and is the sense most live in current use there.
Alternate spellings
mollygrubs · molligrups · murleygrubbs
Sources
- Merriam-Webster, entry mulligrubs. · dictionary
- Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL), entry MOLLIGRUPS n. · dictionary
- Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), entry mulligrubs. · dictionary