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[Mugwump]

Originally Posted by skip spence

Did you ever read William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch by the way? You should because it's quite brilliant and also because there are Mugwumps in that novel....

Yes, but the word's derivation is much earlier than that. Mugwump was an Americanism, an early 19th century revival of the Massachusett Indian word mugquomp, a syncopated form of muggumquomp, meaning war leader. About 50 years later mugwump was used to refer to any Republican who refused to support the party nominee, James Blaine, in the presidential campaign of 1884. Thereafter it was used to refer generally to a person unable to make up his mind, or who was neutral on a controversial political issue. The great cartoonist Walt Kelly used the word mugwump in this sense in his comic strip Pogo, to refer to the type of person who can never quite make up his mind, a fence-straddler.

Now is that more than you needed or ever wanted to know, or what?