mubble-fubbles

English

Alternative forms

• muble-fubles, mumble-fubbles

Etymology

Not clear. Likely onomatopoeic. Possibly reduplication derived from the then-used verbs mumble (“to mix up”) and fubble (“to jumble up”), or perhaps the slang term fumble (“to sexually underperform”). Compare mumble-jumble.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈmʌ.bəl.ˈfʌ.bl̩z/
• Rhymes: -ʌbl̩z

Noun

mubble-fubbles pl (plural only)

1. (colloquial, obsolete) The doldrums; the blahs; a downer; a mood of depression, dejection or melancholy. [16th & 17th c.]
   • 1589, Martin (pseudonym) Marprelate, Pappe with an hatchet:

     Ile make him pull his powting croscloath ouer his beetle browes for melancholie, and then my next booke, shall be Martin in his mubble fubbles.

   • 1592, John Lyly, Midas:

     Melancholy? Marry gup, is melancholy a word for a barber's mouth? Thou shouldst say, heavy, dull, and doltish. Melancholy is the crest of courtiers' arms, and now every base companion, being in his muble-fubles, says he is melancholy.

   • 1644, John Taylor, Being Yet unhanged, send greeting, to Iohn Booker:

      […] when it is well beaten, mix it with the Braines of Booker, May, Wither, Mercurius Britannicus, Prinne, and two or three hundred Knaves Braines more, it is an approved medicine for the encrease of Rebellion, for the grumbling in the gizzard, the flux of the Tongue, or the melancholy mubble-fubbles, provided it be taken fasting (upon a full stomacke) at five of the clocke in the morning after Dinner.

   • 1654, Edmund Gayton, Festivous notes on the history and adventures of the renowned Don Quixote:

     He that hath read Seneca or Boethius, is well provided against any ordinary misfortune; and to have by heart the story of Argalus and Parthenia; the dolorous madrigals of old Plangus in the Arcadia; or the history of Pyramus and Thisbe, is a never failing remedy for the mubble-fubbles: For to be acquainted with sadness, besets familiarity, and familiars never kill one another, unless the devil is in them.