mump

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /mʌmp/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Etymology 1

Perhaps borrowed through obsolete Dutch mompen (“to cheat, swindle, deceive”), according to Kroonen, a derivative of Proto-Germanic *mump- (“to stain”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *mm̥bʰ-neh₂-^[1] Also akin to German mimpfeln (“to mumble”), Icelandic mumpa (“to take into the mouth”). See also English mum.

While Kroonen claims Ancient Greek μέμφομαι (mémphomai, “I blame, accuse”) and the Germanic forms are reconcilable and related, Beekes rejects this, stating that Germanic -p- cannot here correspond to Greek -φ- and that this etymological connection is not widely considered reliable.^[2]

Verb

mump (third-person singular simple present mumps, present participle mumping, simple past and past participle mumped)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To mumble, speak unclearly.
   • 1773, Oliver Goldsmith, Epilogue Spoklen by Mrs. Bulkley and Miss Catley [intended for She Stoops to Conquer]:

     Who mump their passion, and who, grimly smiling,
     Still thus address the fair with voice beguiling […]

2. To move the lips with the mouth closed; to mumble, as in sulkiness.
   • 1630, John Taylor, The Necessitie of Hanging:

     He mumps, and lowres, and hangs the lip […]

3. (intransitive) To beg, especially if using a repeated phrase.
4. To deprive of (something) by cheating; to impose upon.
5. To cheat; to deceive; to play the beggar.
   • 1774, Edmund Burke, Speech on American Taxation, April 19, 1774:

     Your ministerial directors blustered like tragic tyrants here; and then went mumping with a sore leg in America, canting, and whining, and complaining of faction, which represented them as friends to a revenue from the colonies.

6. To be sullen or sulky.
   • 1902, William James, “Lecture 2”, in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature […] , New York, N.Y.; London: Longmans, Green, and Co. […], →OCLC:

     The Christian also spurns the pinched and mumping sick-room attitude, and the lives of saints are full of a kind of callousness to diseased conditions of body which probably no other human records show.

   • 1948, James Gould Cozzens, Guard of Honor:

     It remained necessary to make a shift at bearing yourself like a man; not mumping, not moping.

7. (transitive, intransitive) To nibble.
8. (Of a police officer) to accept a small gift or bribe in exchange for services.

Derived terms

• mumper
• Mumping Day

Noun

mump (plural mumps)

1. (obsolete) A grimace.

Etymology 2

Noun

mump (plural mumps)

1. (UK, dialect, Somerset) A cube of peat; a spade's depth of digging turf.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “mump”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

References

1. Guus Kroonen (2013) “mump”, in Alexander Lubotsky, editor, Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 11)‎, Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 375
2. Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010) Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 10), with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 930

Anagrams

• PMMU