mickey

See also: Mickey

English

Etymology

• (potato): From the common Irish name; compare murphy (“a potato”).
• (computer mouse resolution): An allusion to the cartoon character Mickey Mouse.

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈmɪki/

• Audio (CAN)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪki

Noun

mickey (plural mickeys)

1. (chiefly Canada, informal) A small bottle of liquor, holding 375 ml or 13 oz., typically shaped to fit in one's pocket. [from the 1910s]

   While you're at the liquor store, get a mickey of rye?

2. (US, slang) A Mickey Finn; a beverage, usually alcoholic, that has been drugged. [from the 1930s]

   I slipped him a mickey.

3. (US, slang, obsolete) An Irish person. [from the 1850s]
4. (US, slang, dated, Depression Era) A potato. [from the 1930s]

   We roasted mickeys over a fire with two-foot sticks.

5. (chiefly Ireland, informal) The penis. [from the 1900s]

   He fell off the bike and injured his mickey.

   • 2004, “Take a Toast”, in The Love Never Dies, performed by Paperboy et al.:

     Five Fingers rapped around my mickey, being /ke/[??]
     Smokin on this dickey in the Fifty /se/[??], and shift

6. (Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, informal) The vagina. [from the early 1900s]
7. (Australia, informal) A well-known honeyeater, the Noisy Miner, Manorina melanocephala, of eastern Australia. [from the 1910s]
8. (rural Australia, informal) A young bull, especially one that is unbranded and running wild. [from the 1860s]
9. (Cockney rhyming slang) piss, shortened and more commonly used form of Mickey Bliss.
10. (computing) The resolution of a mouse: the smallest measurable distance it can move the cursor, used as a unit of length.

Verb

mickey (third-person singular simple present mickeys, present participle mickeying, simple past and past participle mickeyed)

1. To secretly slip drugs into somebody's drink.
   • 1951, The Scented Flesh, page 46:

     Sam said he hadn't mickeyed me.

   • 1994, Dana Stabenow, A Cold-Blooded Business, →ISBN, page 202:

     You mickeyed my drink, didn't you?.

   • 2005, Wildwood Road, →ISBN, page 65:

     No question now, as far as she was concerned, that someone had mickeyed his beer.

Derived terms

• mickey-take
• Texas mickey

See also

• take the mickey
• throw a mickey