mickle

Origin: From , michel, mikel, mochel, muchel, mukel, from , myċel, from , from . The word is cognate with , , . . For the adverb and noun forms, compare and . The noun sense “a small amount” was due to the proverb many a little makes a mickle being incorrectly rendered as many a mickle makes a muckle, leading to mickle being thought to mean “a small quantity” and muckle to mean “a large quantity”, even though muckle is a variant of mickle and both mean “a large quantity”. Origin information sourced from Wiktionary contributors (CC BY-SA 4.0).