Mugwump

Mugwumps were Republicans who supported Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland in the 1884 United States presidential election.

They were often portrayed as "fence-sitters" with part of their body on the side of the Democrats and the other on the side of the Republicans. The term Mugwump is a combination of "mug" and "wump", which means respectively the face and the backside.

Origin of the Mugwumps

Printed in the Winfield Courier (Winfield, Kansas), Thursday, May 7, 1885.

The following verses may throw some light upon the true meaning of the word mugwumps. The names used for birds or bats are not found in the dictionary; but Judge Bennett says they are all found in the swamps of Eastern North Carolina.

The mugwump roosts in the hollow log,
The sagwag sits in the tree;
Whenever I hear the hogwig sing
My heart is sad in me.

Whenever the snagpop toots his toot,
To the wail of the migwag hen,
And the nigfunk chirps in the shrilly night,

You bet I'm lonely then.

Mugwump is also the name of an early computer game written in BASIC and presented in a book by David H. Ahl, the editor of Creative Computing magazine in the 1980s.

Mugwumps are fictional creatures created by William Burroughs in his book Naked Lunch. Here is a short excerpt : "Mugwumps have no liver and nourish themselves exlusively on sweets. Thin, purple-blue lips cover a razor sharp beak of black bone with which the frequently tear each other to shreds in fights over clients. These creatures secrete an addictive fluid though their erect penises which prolongs life by slowing metabolism. (In fact all longevity agents have proved addicting in exact ratio to their effectiveness in prolonging life.) "

According to Merriam-Webster's Third International Dictionary, originally "mugwump" was a Native American word meaning "person of importance."