Merkin - Other Usage of The Term

Other Usage of The Term

• In Stanley Kubrick's 1964 anti-war black comedy Dr. Strangelove, the President of the United States, played by Peter Sellers, is named Merkin Muffley.

• The term can be used in an obscure sense to refer to the vulva.

• In Europe, the term has also been in common usage as a jocular term for an American since the 1960s. The Oxford English Dictionary reports that the term has become common Internet slang for Americans or American English.

• More recently, the removable sheepskin headband found on the inside of safety hardhats are referred to as merkins by many in the mining industry of Western Australia.

• The popular saltwater fly fishing lure, used primarily in targeting bonefish and permit, Del Brown's Merkin is also named after the artificial hairpiece. The Merkin fly pattern represents a crab, referencing the merkin's historical use for pubic lice (also colloquially known as crabs). Further, Del's Merkin is tied with a disc of fuzzy yarn, imitating the crab's shell, but also reminiscent of the fly's namesake.

• In Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel Lolita, Humbert Humbert confesses to the reader "Although I told myself I was looking merely for a soothing presence, a glorified pot-au-feu, an animated merkin, what really attracted me to Valeria was the imitation she gave of a little girl".