Take the Mickey

Origin of: Take the Mickey

Take the Mickey

To take the mickey or to mickey-take is to ridicule or make fun of someone and it derives from rhyming slang, Mickey Bliss/piss, where to take the piss is vulgar slang for ridiculing or making fun of someone. To take the mickey dates from the 1930s. If Mickey Bliss was indeed a real person, his identity is lost to us today. Sometimes the expression is used in a mock-formal way ‘extract the Michael’ and this dates from 1950 onwards.