Muggeseggele - Wikipedia
Muggeseggele, or Muckenseckel, is a humorous Alemannic German idiom used in Swabia to designate a nonspecific very small length or amount of something; it refers to a housefly's scrotum.[ 1] [ 2] It has been called the smallest Swabian unit of measurement[ 3] [ 4] and plays a similar role in northern Baden-Württemberg[ 5] and Franconia.
The term Muggeseggele has an iconic character and is one of the most preferred Swabian idioms.[ 6] In a 2009 readers' survey by Stuttgarter Nachrichten, the largest newspaper in Stuttgart, Muggeseggele was chosen as "the most beautiful Swabian word" by a large margin.[ 3]
The Swabian term for housefly is Mugg. This is akin to Mücke, the standard German word for mosquito. According to linguist Hans-Martin Gauger, the second element in the word Muggeseggele corresponds to the standard German Säckel, meaning little sack; the term, therefore, must have originally referred to the scrotum, like the Latin cognate saccellus.[ 7] This second element in the word occurs independently in Swabian German as Seckel, which is used as a swear word and is thus a rare instance of a sexually themed abusive word in the German language, which mostly uses scatological swearing.[ 7] [ 8]
In the case of Muggeseggele, the sexual and abusive aspect is not at all present. On the contrary, it is mostly used to express a very small but distinctive distance or amount of substance, as in "the soup needs a Muggeseggele of parsley". It can be used in speaking to children and is deemed completely harmless (compare Bubenspitzle). It is used in the TV series Ein Fall für B.A.R.Z., which takes place in Fellbach. German's public broadcaster SWR's children's website SWR Kindernetz (kids' network) mention the word in a Swabian dictionary that presents some peculiarities of the Swabian dialect to their young audience. Kindernetz uses the sentence A muggeseggele Zeit hätten wir noch! and translates it as Ein bisschen Zeit hätten wir noch, meaning "We still have a tiny bit of time left".[ 9]
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