English

Alternative forms

• meikle
• muchell (obsolete)
• michel

Determiner

mickle ‎(comparative more mickle, superlative most mickle)

1. (now chiefly Scotland and Northumbria) Large, great.
   • 1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song:

     at gloaming a shepherd would see it, with its great wings half-folded across the great belly of it and its head, like the head of a meikle cock, but with the ears of a lion, poked over a for tree, watching.

2. (now chiefly Scotland and Northumbria) Much; a great quantity or amount of.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.7:

     Full many wounds in his corrupted flesh / He did engrave, and muchell blood did spend […].

3. (now chiefly Scotland and Northumbria) Most; the majority of.

Usage notes

Use in Northumbrian is occasional, the term muckle is more common.

Derived terms

• overmickle
• somickle
• so mickle

Noun

mickle ‎(countable and uncountable, plural mickles)

1. (chiefly Scotland) A great amount.

   Many a little makes a mickle.

2. (Scotland) A small amount.
3. (obsolete) Important or great people as a​ class.
4. (obsolete) Greatness, largeness, stature.

Derived terms

• many a mickle makes a muckle

Pronoun

mickle

1. (now chiefly Scotland) A large amount or great extent.
   • 1721. James Kelly, A Complete Collection of Scottish Proverbs:

     Seek mickle, and get something; seek little, and get nothing.

Adverb

mickle ‎(comparative more mickle, superlative most mickle)

1. (now chiefly Scotland) To a great extent.
2. (obsolete) Often, frequently.

References

• mickle in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• J[ohn] A. Simpson and E[dward] S. C. Weiner, editors (1989) The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, ISBN 978-0-19-861186-8.

Scots

Etymology

From Old English miċel, myċel.

Adjective

mickle ‎(comparative mair mickle, superlative maist mickle)

1. much, great

Noun

mickle ‎(uncountable)

1. a great amount