Meanings
present singular third person mumps · participle present mumping · participle past mumped · past mumped
- ambitransitiveTo mumble, speak unclearly.
Who mump their passion, and who, grimly smiling, Still thus address the fair with voice beguiling […]
1773, Oliver Goldsmith, Epilogue Spoklen by Mrs. Bulkley and Miss Catley [intended for She Stoops to Conquer] - To move the lips with the mouth closed; to mumble, as in sulkiness.
He mumps, and lowres, and hangs the lip […]
1630, John Taylor, The Necessitie of Hanging - intransitiveTo beg, especially if using a repeated phrase.
- To cheat; to deceive; to play the beggar.
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.
1774, Edmund Burke, Speech on American Taxation, April 19, 1774 - To be sullen or sulky.
It remained necessary to make a shift at bearing yourself like a man; not mumping, not moping.
1948, James Gould Cozzens, Guard of Honor1 more example
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.
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 - ambitransitiveTo nibble.
Synonyms & antonyms
verbTo deprive of (something) by cheating; to impose upon.
Origin
- Proto-Indo-European*mm̥bʰ-neh₂-
- Proto-Germanic*mump-“to stain”
- Englishmump
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- 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.
More words from Proto-Germanic, Proto-Indo-European
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with mump
Cite this entry
mump. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mump
“mump.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mump. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “mump,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mump.
Source: mump on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.