mussuck

English

Etymology

From Urdu مشک (maśak) / Hindi मशक (maśak), from Persian مشک (mašk), from Middle Persian [script needed] (mšk' /⁠mašk⁠/), from Old Persian 𐎶𐏁𐎣𐎠 (m-š-k-a /⁠maškā⁠/), via Aramaic or another descendant of Proto-Semitic *mašk- (“skin”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈmʌsək/
• Rhymes: -ʌsək

Noun

mussuck (plural mussucks)

1. (historical, Pakistan, India) an inflated skin-bag for water, variously given as from goats, from cows or from dogs, often by bheesties
   • 1876 Joseph Fayrer, The London Medical Record vol. 4 page 183 = The Practitioner vol. 16 page 183

     In that form of sunstroke where the person is struck down suddenly by a hot sun, the patient should be removed into the shade, and the douche of cold water being allowed to fall in a stream on the head and body, from a pump (or, as in India, from the mussuck, or other similar contrivance should be freely resorted to, the object being two-fold: to reduce the temperature of the over-heated centres, and to rouse them into action. During the assault on the White House piquet in the last Burmese war, numbers of men were struck down by the direct action of the sun during the month of April. They were laid out perfectly unconscious, in their red coats and stocks (they wore them in those days, 1852), but were recovered by the cold douche freely applied by the mussuck over the head and body.

   • 1907, Owen Tudor Burne, Memories, London: Edward Arnold, page 125:

     We had what was to us an extraordinary and fascinating experience in this trip of going down the Ravi River through strong rapids on mussucks, or inflated cowskins, and it was indeed a delightful river voyage of fifty miles through splendid hill scenery.

Alternative forms

• mussick, mussock