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mook (n.)

Seems to have been taken from Caribbean English, in which it is (was) used to refer to a gullible person. The word has since undergone several changes in meaning, so that it now depends on which sense of the word the speaker has been exposed to. It was popularized in Scorsese's "Mean Streets" (1972), but when Johnny calls Jimmy a mook, it causes confusion: "Nobody knows what a mook is" even appears in the script.

mook (n.)
"This type of student, rigorously following a daily assignment schedule and graphing his grades on the wall, is a never common but somewhat frequent phenomenon. The ‘grind’, ‘mook’, or ‘weenie’ superficially seems to satisfy the demands of Yale, but in many ways he is not alive to the spirit of the place."
--Yale Alumni Magazine, Jan. 21, 1958

"Call them knuckleheads or young white guys; Spin magazine lambasted them with the term ‘mooks’, a label that has since been picked up as a badge of honor."
--NY Times Magazine, Aug. 6, 2000: 39/2

by D.R.M. December 5, 2006

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