mule

noun

1. The generally sterile male or female hybrid offspring of a male donkey and a female horse.

   “One day he ran into a herd of a half dozen elk, so he rode his mule down the canyon three or four miles, leaving the sheep alone.”

2. The generally sterile hybrid offspring of any two species of animals.

   “It would be exceedingly interesting to know if the hybrid would reproduce, a matter I deem exceedingly doubtful, for the chances are it would prove a "mule" (infertile).”

3. (archaic)A hybrid plant.

   “Vegetable mules supply an irrefragable argument in favour of the sexual system of botany.”

   “The most extraordinary mule, however, that is asserted to have been produced on the Continent, is a cross between the cabbage and horse-radish, which Monsieur Sageret reports that he has obtained […]”

4. (informal)A stubborn person.

   “"Where in the hell do you think I learned to be such a mule?””

5. (slang)A person paid to smuggle drugs.

   “Cocaine packet ingestion (these patients referred to as “mules”) may warrant surgery, Golytely or expectant passage.”

   ““Yeah, in Denver, we know about Uriarte's involvement in meth. Our Las Cruces office seized over six hundred pounds of methamphetamine from two of his mules last year.””

6. A coin or medal minted with obverse and reverse designs not normally seen on the same piece, either intentionally or in error.

   “What is less clear, however, is why mint workers should have chosen to produce mules, if they were making forgeries […]”

7. A MMORPG character, or NPC companion in a tabletop RPG, used mainly to store extra inventory for the owner's primary character.

   “He was in the middle of organizing his massive stash of rare and exquisite bounty, all kept safely in the inventory cache of a mule, an entirely separate character which he paid a monthly fee to maintain exclusively for that purpose.”

8. Any of a group of cocktails involving ginger ale or ginger beer, citrus juice, and various liquors.
9. A kind of triangular sail for a yacht.

   “In heavier seas where a boat must sail a course dictated by waves, or where wave action makes power more important than pointing, the mule will prove the faster sail.”

10. A kind of cotton-spinning machine.
11. Any shoe with an upper covering the front of the foot but without a back flap or strap, leaving the heel exposed.

    “The bride was a shocking housekeeper and dragged round all day in boudoir cap, frowsy negligee and mules—slip, slop, slip, slop.”

    “Routine dress for Tuesday will be bra and panties with high-heel satin mules.”

    “On Monday, the tournament’s first day, Ms. Riddle wore a blush pink mini dress by Patou, paired with matching strawberry-adorned mules (a nod to the tournament’s well-known strawberry and cream dish) and a red Chanel purse.”

verb

1. (slang, transitive)To smuggle (illegal drugs).

   “There are many drug lords, each with his own corridor (think of it as a franchise of sorts) funneling narcotics into Texas. There are multifold methods of transport. The old, and still viable, way is to "mule" it across the Rio Grande in a small boat.”

   “Thornton was supposed to mule it back to the States from one of the ports he stopped in, give it to Maxwell and Ames, and get the second half of a quarter-million.”

name

1. A surname.