[homoe]

Originally Posted by *Anya*

muckety-muck

I was going to write in another thread that my GF was home from another business trip. I was going to write that she was a muckety-muck in her company and then thought: where the heck did muckety-muck come from?

high muckamuck also high muckety-muck
n. Slang

An important, often overbearing person.

[From Chinook Jargon hayo makamak, plenty to eat.]

Word History: One might not immediately associate the word high muckamuck with fur traders and Native Americans, but it seems that English borrowed the term from Chinook Jargon, a pidgin language combining words from English, French, Nootka, Chinook, and the Salishan languages that was formerly used by them in the Pacific Northwest. In this language hayo makamak meant "plenty to eat" and is recorded in that sense in English contexts, the first one dated 1853, in which the phrase is spelled Hiou Muckamuck.

In 1856 we find the first recorded instance of the word meaning "pompous person, person of importance," in the Democratic State Journal published in Sacramento: "The professors the high 'Muck-a-Mucks' tried fusion, and produced confusion."

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

I had always thought it was mucky muck, but perhaps again it could be regional as many idioms tend to be!