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John Jackson Miller
@farawaypress.com

Recently read DRAGNET: THE CASE OF THE COURTEOUS KILLER in its original 1958 Pocket Book form (surprisingly, an ebook exists). Richard Deming captures Jack Webb's patter pretty well, but here's a curiosity: he spells "mug shot" as "mugg shot" throughout. Was that spelling a thing?

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Rob Schamberger
@schambergerart.com

Yup! Especially if the person was of Swedish descent or in an area of lots of Swedes. ‘Mug’ or ‘mugg’ (in Swedish) dates back around a hundred years earlier, when caricatures of faces were popular on drinking mugs. The name crossed over as a way to say ‘face’ as slang.