_Huggins and Muggins._--Can any of your readers assign the origin of this jocular appellation? I would hazard the conjecture, that it may be corruption of _Hogen Mogen_, High Mightinesses, the style, I believe, of the States-General of Holland; and that it probably became an expression of contempt in the mouths of the Jacobites for the followers of William III., from whence it has passed to a more general application.
[HUGGER-MUGGER, says Dr. Richardson, is the common way of writing this word, from Udal to the present time. No probable etymology, he adds, has yet been given. Sir John Stoddart (_Ency. Metropolitana_, vol i. p. 120.) has given a long article on this word, which concludes with the following remarks:--"The last etymology that we shall mention is from the Dutch title, { 342} _Hoog Moogende_ (High Mightinesses), given to the States-General, and much ridiculed by some of our English writers; as in _Hudibras_:
'But I have sent him for a token To your Low-country, _Hogen Mogen_.'
It has been supposed that _hugger-mugger_, corrupted from _Hogen Mogen_, was meant in derision of the secret transactions of their Mightinesses; but it is probable that the former word was known in English before the latter, and upon the whole it seems most probable that _hugger_ is a mere intensitive form of _hug_, and that _mugger_ is a reduplication of sound with a slight variation, which is so common in cases of this kind."]
_Balderdash._--What is the meaning and the etymology of "balderdash?"
[Skinner suggests the following etymology: "BALDERDASH, _potus mixtus_, credo ab A.-S. _bald_, audax, _balder_, audacior vel audacius, et nostro _dash_; _miscere_, q.d. _potus temere mixtus_." Dr. Jamieson explains it as "foolish and noisy talk. Islandic, _bulldur_, stultorum balbuties." Dr. Ogilvie, however, has queried its derivation from the "Spanish _balda_, a trifle, or _baldonar_, to insult with abusive language; Welsh, _baldorz_, to prattle. Mean, senseless prate; a jargon of words; ribaldry; anything jumbled together without judgment."]
_Lovell, Sculptor._--What is known of this artist? That he was in advance of the age he flourished in is evinced by his beautifully executed engravings in _Love's Sacrifice_ (fol. Lond. 1652), which for delicacy of work are far beyond anything of the period.