Mudlarks

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. Children in 19th-century Britain who waded through mud and sewage searching for salvageable items to sell ; birds that feed by probing and picking through mud and soft ground
2. Young scavengers who combed through river mud for discarded objects of worth in industrial England ; waterbirds that hunt for food by working through wet mud and sediment
3. Poor children who scraped a living by hunting through mud for recyclable scraps and waste ; birds that search muddy areas by pecking and prodding for insects and small creatures

Etymology: "Mudlarks" is the plural of "mudlark", a compound of "mud" and "lark". The "lark" here is the old sense of a playful prank or frolic, a meaning it carried in English for centuries before it came to name a bird. Combining the two gives a picture of someone at play in the mud, and the sense of a mischievous escapade still shows in the older phrase "a lark" meaning a bit of fun. The term was later applied to people who scavenged the shores of the Thames in London for anything of value, such as coal, rope, and metal, that the tide had left behind. These mudlarks were often poor children and adults who worked the riverbank at low tide, sifting through the silt for salvage to sell. The name suited the work: they were grubbing around in the mud, and the playful "lark" sense had long since given way to the more practical business of making a living from it.