September 1, 1997

mook

What does it mean (really) to call someone a "mook"? Harvey Keitel was confused about it in "Mean Streets," and I remain so...

It's usually difficult to say what people really mean by terms such as mook, because they're usually used as vague terms of insult. The definition we use in the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Volume II, is 'an ineffectual, foolish, or contemptible person'. I know, this covers a lot of ground, but it's necessary.

Most of the time, examples of mook are found in phrases like "What a mook!" or "You mook!," which doesn't help us very much. There are occasional attempts to clarify the meaning, for example, in a discussion about the desirability of certain chic-restaurant clientele: "Mooks spend money and can keep you in the black, but they don't make for a very attractive social environment....By Mooks I mean not only outer-borough types and out-and-out greaseballs, but Wall Streeters, unattractive and socially useless Eurotrash, advertising execs and Upper East Siders." (New York Press, 1995). Unfortunately, even something this specific ends up confusing the issue, for it is clear that mook just means 'any disliked person'.

So, in sum, there's no way to be very precise about it.

The discussion of mook in Mean Streets, in 1973, was one of the earliest examples of the word in its most recent history. The earliest known example comes from S.J. Perelman in 1930, but after that there's a gap until Mean Streets, with the exception of the adjectival "mooky-lookin' blond guy" in the musical Hair.

The origin of mook is uncertain, but it's probably a variant of the earlier moke. This word is from the nineteenth century, and originally meant 'a donky or mule', but its main use in the United States was as a contemptuous term for a black person, a sense very common in the late nineteenth century, but apparently obsolete after the 1910s. Moke was also used to mean 'a contemptible person', like mook. Moke is itself of unknown origin, but it seems likely that the later mook is derived from it.