After A’s IEP meeting today, we had the opportunity to use one of my personal favorite terms, high-up mucky-muck. Jodi always gives me a weird look when I use it, so I decided to finally look the durn thing up. After a few false starts, I found the origin on answers.com – It’s actually “High Muck-a-muck”:

[From Chinook Jargon hayo makamak, plenty to eat.]

it seems that English borrowed the term from Chinook Jargon, a pidgin language combining words from English, French, Nootka, Chinook, and the Salishan languages

In 1856 we find the first recorded instance of the word meaning “pompous person, person of importance,” in the Democratic State Journal published in Sacramento: “The professors &emdash; the high “Muck-a-Mucks” &emdash; tried fusion, and produced confusion.”