Morkin

//ˈmoɹkɪn// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An animal that has died of disease or by mischance. obsolete

    "Could hee^([sic]) not sacrifice / Some sorry morkin that unbidden dies, / Or meagre heifer, or some rotten ewe, […]"

Example

More examples

"Could hee^([sic]) not sacrifice / Some sorry morkin that unbidden dies, / Or meagre heifer, or some rotten ewe, […]"

Etymology

Probably from mort + -kin (compare mortling); or from Old French mortekine, a variant of mortecine, from Medieval Latin morticinus. Compare also Swedish murken (“putrefied”), Icelandic morkinn (“putrid”).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.