Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To work on in a blundering, untidy, or unsatisfactory way; half do (a thing); spoil; botch.
  • noun Rubbish; refuse; dirt; dung.
  • noun In mining, rubbish; attle; mining refuse; that which remains after the ore has been separated.
  • noun A blundered piece of business; a mull or mess.
  • noun The stump of a tree.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete Rubbish; refuse; dirt.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Rubbish, waste matter.
  • noun Australia, New Zealand, mining Waste rock from which the wanted gold, minerals, opal, etc., has been extracted; waste material generated while searching for minerals or while mining, such as when sinking a shaft.
  • noun Nonsense, rubbish.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From mull +‎ -ock.

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Examples

  • Well, aw'll mak a mullock o 'thee i' two minnits if tha doesn't shut up!

    Yorkshire Tales. Third Series Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect John Hartley 1877

  • When your shaft is sunk a few feet, you should begin to log up the top for at least 3 ft. or 4 ft., so as to get a tip for your "mullock" and lode stuff.

    Getting Gold: a practical treatise for prospectors, miners and students

  • The "mullock," as he called it, from his hands, and from the bed where it had lain so long, so crusted the little thing which he gave me, that

    Erema — My Father's Sin 1862

  • The men are hard at work on these hills of "mullock," plying the windlasses by which the stuff is brought up from below, or puddling and washing off "the dirt."

    A Boy's Voyage Round the World Samuel Smiles 1858

  • Ah knew tha'd mak a mullock on it when tha started! "

    Yorkshire Tales. Third Series Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect John Hartley 1877

  • The “mullock,” as he called it, from his hands, and from the bed where it had lain so long, so crusted the little thing which he gave me, that I dipped it again in the swelling stream, and rubbed it with both hands, to make out what it was.

    Erema Richard Doddridge 2004

  • But her needeth care, or her may all goo away in mullock.

    Erema Richard Doddridge 2004

  • Seen nearer at hand, the dun-coloured desert resolved itself into uncountable pimpling clay and mud-heaps, of divers shade and varying sizes: some consisted of but a few bucketfuls of mullock, others were taller than the tallest man.

    Australia Felix 2003

  • Splashed with red clay until he looked like a terra-cotta image restored to light after concealment under rubbish, steaming with sweat, fluttering with importance, Frank Edward stood still for a moment beside Alec, shovelling away some mullock.

    Last Leaves from Dunk Island 2003

  • Tolerating no unseemly sights, lank, limp, succulent vegetation sprang up as if by magic on the mullock heaps, as did grey fluffy fungus on damp boots and dripping tucker-bags.

    Last Leaves from Dunk Island 2003

Comments

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  • Above the camp was the mine itself, two small caves that would have been unnoticed but for the broken winches outside them and the heaps of mullock now frozen into the slope of the mountain.

    - Jon Cleary, Mask of the Andes.

    May 12, 2008

  • "Teaching at the Hermitage she got the worst of it: all those stoud-legged daughters of squatters who displayed the dull certainties of their type. But it was in that mullock heap she found a muddied stone more valuable than any of the fool's gold the staff so proudly presented her with."

    —Peter Carey, Illywhacker, 13

    April 14, 2009

  • Heaping mullock, Batman!

    April 14, 2009

  • Ooh, you're reading Illywhacker! I'm curious to see what you think of it (when you've finished).

    April 16, 2009

  • I'm a little more than halfway through, and I rather like it.

    April 16, 2009

  • I thought you might. Bizarrely entertaining, isn't it?

    April 17, 2009

  • So oligarchs might merrily frolic

    We worship the extractive Moloch.

    We blast and we drill

    The ore from the hill

    And fill up the valleys with mullock.

    August 29, 2015