musher

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈmʌʃə/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈmʌʃəɹ/
• Rhymes: -ʌʃə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: mush‧er

From mush (“to drive dogs, usually pulling a sled, across snow”) +‎ -er (suffix forming agent nouns).^[1][2] Mush is probably derived from French marche or marchons, respectively the second-person singular and first-person plural imperative forms of marcher (“to move; to travel; to walk”),^[3] from Proto-Germanic *markōną (“to mark; to notice”), from *marką (“mark; sign; stamp”), possibly related to *markō (“border, boundary; area, region”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *merǵ- (“(noun) border, boundary, edge; (verb) to divide”).

musher (plural mushers) (chiefly Alaska, Canada)

2. One who drives a dogsled over ice and snow; specifically, one who participates in a dogsled race.

   Synonym: dog musher

   • 1903 July, Jack London, “Who Has Won to Mastership”, in The Call of the Wild, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC, pages 109–110:

     It was a record run. Each day for fourteen days they had averaged forty miles. For three days Perrault and François threw chests up and down the main street of Skaguay and were deluged with invitations to drink, while the team was the constant centre of a worshipful crowd of dog-busters and mushers.

   • 2014, Tricia Brown, “Champions and Record Breakers”, in Iditarod, Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, →ISBN, page 109:

     The youngest musher to enter was Dallas Seavey, who ran in the 2005 Junior Iditarod at age 17, then turned 18 one day before the Iditarod and ran that race in the same year. […] Dallas Seavey was also the youngest musher to win, taking the 2012 championship at age 25.

   • 2020 September 23, Blair Braverman, “What my sled dogs taught me about planning for the unknown”, in The New York Times‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 4 January 2023:

     A sled dog learns that by the time she's hungry, her musher has already prepared a meal; by the time she's tired, she has a warm bed.

3. One who travels over snow, chiefly by dogsled but also by foot.

• dog musher

Origin uncertain, possibly from mush (“cab driver who is the owner of their cab, and sometimes a small number of other cabs as well”) +‎ -er (suffix forming agent nouns), although the word is attested slightly earlier than mush.^[4] Mush is possibly derived from mush (“to drive dogs, usually pulling a sled, across snow”, verb) (see etymology 1), or mush (“(slang, rare) umbrella”, noun) (a clipping of mushroom, from the similar appearance; referring to drivers shielding passengers with umbrellas in rainy weather).^[5]

musher (plural mushers)

1. (chiefly London, slang) Synonym of mush (“a cab driver who is the owner of their cab, and sometimes a small number of other cabs as well”).
   • 1927, Edgar Wallace, chapter XXXIV, in The Clever One [The Forger], 1st American edition, Garden City, N.Y.: The Crime Club, Doubleday, Doran & Company, published 1928, →OCLC, page 287:

     Nobody knew Old Joe. He was a "musher"—that is to say, he owned his own cab and mostly did night work. He gave no trouble to anybody, and came and went as a rule in the dark hours of the night.

Clipping of musher(oom) or musher(oon), variants of mushroom.^[6][7]

musher (plural mushers)

1. (England, dialectal, chiefly Hampshire) A mushroom.

• mushing on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• hersum, rheums