English · Idiom Historical

Cousin Michael

Preserved but no longer current.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

The Germans are so called. Michel, in Old German, means "gross"; Cousin Michael is meant to indicate a slow, heavy, unrefined, coarse-feeding people.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

người Đức

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Era: ca. 1898 (Victorian)

Sources & notes

Reproduced from Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898 edition, public domain; archive.org, retrieved 2026-07-31; OCR text, minor errors possible). Reflects the scholarship and attitudes of its era.

Topics: Family Historical slang (1800s)

Common questions

What does “Cousin Michael” mean?

The Germans are so called. Michel, in Old German, means "gross"; Cousin Michael is meant to indicate a slow, heavy, unrefined, coarse-feeding people.

Is “Cousin Michael” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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