mammock

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“
The foot is the day- labourer, and this is armed with hobnail boots, because it has to wear and be worn by the ground; which again is symbolical; for it is navvies or day-labourers who, on the great scale or in gangs and millions, mainly trench, tunnel, blast, and in other ways disfigure, "mammock" the earth and, on a small scale, singly, and superficially stamp it with their footprints.

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Definitions (4)

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  1. A shapeless piece; a chunk; a fragment. [Obsolete or prov. Eng.] But while Protestants, to avoid the due labor of understanding their own Religion, are content to lodg it in the Breast or rather in the Books of a Clergyman, and to take it thence by scraps and mammocks, as he dispenses it in his Sundays Dole, they will always be learning and never knowing. Milton, Touching Hirelings.
  2. To tear in pieces; maul: mangle; mumble. He did so set his teeth and tear it; O, I warrant, how he mammocked it! Shak., Cor., i. 3. 71. The obscene and surfeted Priest scruples not to paw and mammock the sacramentall bread as familiarly as his Tavern Bisket. Milton, Reformation in Eng., i.

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Examples (2)

  • The foot is the day- labourer, and this is armed with hobnail boots, because it has to wear and be worn by the ground; which again is symbolical; for it is navvies or day-labourers who, on the great scale or in gangs and millions, mainly trench, tunnel, blast, and in other ways disfigure, "mammock" the earth and, on a small scale, singly, and superficially stamp it with their footprints. —  Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins Now First Published
  • The foot is the day - labourer, and this is armed with hobnail boots, because it has to wear and be worn by the ground; which again is symbolical; for it is navvies or day-labourers who, on the great scale or in gangs and millions, mainly trench, tunnel, blast, and in other ways disfigure, "mammock" the earth and, on a small scale, singly, and superficially stamp it with their footprints. —  Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins Now First Published
 

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Etymologies (2)

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  1. Origin obscure; the termination -ock is diminutive, as in hillock, hummock.
  2. Also mommock, mommick; from mammock, n.
 

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