subs. (American).—1. See quot.
1870. JOHN WHITE, Sketches from America [BARTLETT]. When a man, availing himself of the custom of the country, has secured a young lady for the season, to share with him his sleigh-driving and other of the national amusements, in Canadian phrase she is called his MUFFIN. Her status is a sort of temporary wifehood, limited, of course, by many obvious restrictions, but resembling wifehood in this, that, though a close and continuous relationship, it has nothing in it which shocks, and much in it which allures, the Canadian mind. Among the British commodities exported to our colonies, ‘la pruderie Anglaise’ does not find a place. The origin of the term MUFFIN seems to be wrapped in obscurity.
2. See MUFF, subs. sense 1.
COLD MUFFIN, phr. (common).—Poor; of no account.
1892. MILLIKEN, ’Arry Ballads, p. 36. I thought the theayter COLD MUFFIN.
