Were Wordhunters taking the mickey with their theories?
The Wordhunt was inundated with theories on the origins of the phrase take the mickey, but without any evidence we couldn’t get them past the OED. Tania Styles, OED Etymologist: It is generally much easier to identify an earlier example of a word or phrase than it is to pinpoint exactly how that expression came about. The two processes are closely linked – the quotation evidence of when, where, how, and by whom a word was first used acts as the touchstone by which we test possible etymological theories. Several suggestions discussed in the programme work on the assumption that take the mickey (with its variants take the mick and take the mike) is a bowdlerized version of take the piss, with a more innocuous word replacing the offensive four-letter one. Exactly why mickey was considered an appropriate euphemism for piss is hotly disputed. One theory suggests that mickey here is short for micturition, a medical term for urination. Take the micturition would work nicely as a sanitized ver
