I live in the Appalachians–a place with so many shades of green that a friend who moved here from Colorado reported she’d never seen so many in her life, LOL.
But all those trees and plant life means something else, too. It means we have a lot of humidity in the air, and in summer, that means things get INTENSE. A favorite word around here is muggy.
Muggy has been used to describe conditions that are “damp, close, warm and humid” since around 1746…but why? Where in the world did this word come from?
Turns out it’s from a now-obsolete word, mug, which meant “fog or mist,” which comes from Middle English mugen, “to drizzle.” This Middle English word is from the Old Norse mugga of the same meaning…but them there? Etymologists aren’t entirely sure but suspect it’s related to the root word meug- which means “slippery or slimy.” Which is where mucus comes from.
What do you think? Are muggy and mucus related? (My husband frequently describes a muggy day as “feels like the inside of a mouth out there,” so…not so far off! LOL)
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary. 
