Harry Potter: Where does the word muggle come from?

Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley and other Hogwarts students, J.K. In the saga created by Rowling, of course there are witches. But we, mere readers or spectators of their adventures, devoid of magical powers, are what they call “Muggles” (or, according to the official French translation, “Moldus”).

This word, which Harry Potter fans have known and used for many years, is now part of pop culture. But how was it invented? And what exactly does it mean?

Interview by Galimar Jeunes in 2015Jean-Francois Menard, J.K. The French translator of Rowling’s works offered an explanation of the origin of the term “Muggle”:

“In English it’s Muggle. And when you look up ‘muggle’ in the big Oxford dictionary, you’ll find ‘a common noun whose meaning we’re not sure about'”he recalled.

“ traces it back to a playwright named Thomas Middleton who produced a play in the early 17th century that contained the word “muggle”. But we don’t really know what that means. It also has a dialectal meaning in some areas, meaning “devil’s tail” or something like that.

Very vague and a bit absolute, the word doesn’t really have any meaning strictly speaking, even if its sound does convey some meaning, as the translator also explains:

“Actually, it doesn’t have a precise meaning, and I think the author intended it to be a little bit of a weird word that would refer to a very important category of people because it applies to all of us. They’re all Muggles.”

To translate this meaningless word, Menard searched for something that would produce roughly the same result for the ear:

“I was looking for something in French that sounds similar, it also starts with an ‘m’. I searched a lot, I had a whole list of possibilities. Finally, I chose ‘Muggles’, which for me was what it was. A bit soft-brained, actually. (…) Mol-doo (…) It sounded like a muggle (…) Raised those people who lack something because they cannot understand magic. And finally, it was sorted. “

(Re)discover ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’ Hidden Details…