Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A soft thin muslin used in dresses and for trimmings.
  • intransitive verb To think about extensively; ponder.
  • intransitive verb To ruminate; ponder.
  • transitive verb To heat and spice (wine, for example).

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Dust; rubbish; dirt.
  • noun Soft, crumbling soil.
  • noun [⟨ mull, verb, 3.] A muddle; a mess; a failure: applied to anything that is involved or confused through mismanagement.
  • To reduce to dust; break into small pieces; crumb.
  • To rub, squeeze, or bruise.
  • To confuse; mix up; muddle; make a mess of.
  • noun A cape or promontory: as, the mull of Galloway; the mull of Kintyre.
  • noun A dialectal (Scotch) form of mill.
  • To rain softly.
  • noun Compare muley. Satyr against Hypocrites (1689).
  • To heat and spice for drinking, as ale, wine, or the like; especially, to make into a warm drink, sweetened and spiced.
  • To boil or stew.
  • To stir; bustle; make a stir.
  • To work continuously at anything without making much progress; toil steadily and accomplish little; moil.
  • noun A thin, soft kind of muslin used for dresses, trimmings, etc.: known as India mull, French mull, etc. Also mulmul, mullmull.
  • In leather manufacturing, to soften.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A thin, soft kind of muslin.
  • noun Scot. A promontory.
  • noun A snuffbox made of the small end of a horn.
  • noun An inferior kind of madder prepared from the smaller roots or the peelings and refuse of the larger.
  • transitive verb To heat, sweeten, and enrich with spices.
  • transitive verb To dispirit or deaden; to dull or blunt.
  • noun obsolete Dirt; rubbish.
  • transitive verb Prov. Eng. To powder; to pulverize.
  • intransitive verb Colloq. U.S. To work (over) mentally; to cogitate; to ruminate; -- usually with over.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To work (over) mentally; to cogitate; to ruminate; usually with over.
  • verb To chop marijuana so that it becomes a smokable form.
  • verb To heat and spice something, such as wine.
  • verb To join two or more individual windows at mullions.
  • verb To dull or stupefy
  • noun A thin, soft muslin.
  • noun uncountable Marijuana that has been chopped to prepare it for smoking.
  • noun A stew of meat (chicken, goat, dove, pork, etc.), broth, milk, butter, vegetables, and seasonings, thickened with soda crackers.
  • noun The gauze used in bookbinding to adhere a text block to a book's cover.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb reflect deeply on a subject
  • verb heat with sugar and spices to make a hot drink
  • noun an island in western Scotland in the Inner Hebrides
  • noun a term used in Scottish names of promontories

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Short for mulmull, from Hindi malmal.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Probably Middle English mollen, mullen, to moisten, crumble; see moil.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Origin unknown.]

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Examples

  • Articles of wearing apparel were done upon a soft fine muslin called mull, breadths of which were embroidered for skirts, lengths of it were scalloped and embroidered for flounces, and hand-lengths of it were done for the short waists and sleeves of the pretty Colonial gowns worn by our delicate ancestresses.

    The Development of Embroidery in America Candace Wheeler 1875

  • The Greeks and Romans were known to "mull" wine by adding spices to enhance its flavor and because it was thought to have health benefits.

    Meathead Goldwyn: Believe In Glögg: All You Need To Know About Mulled Wine Meathead Goldwyn 2011

  • The Greeks and Romans were known to "mull" wine by adding spices to enhance its flavor and because it was thought to have health benefits.

    Meathead Goldwyn: Believe In Glögg: All You Need To Know About Mulled Wine Meathead Goldwyn 2011

  • He seemed to kind of mull over the question in a way that before I thought he was pretty defensive.

    CNN Transcript Jun 9, 2008 2008

  • If standard farm 'mull' is used, you must check that it is in this condition, which means that it has decomposed fully.

    4.1 Nursery establishment 1999

  • Muslin is wider than calico or ordinary print, and thin silk fabrics such as mull and chiffon are wider than velvet.

    Textiles and Clothing Kate Heintz Watson

  • At each window should be found dark shades, and if curtains are desired they should be of an easily washable material, such as mull, swiss, lawn, voile, or scrim.

    The Mother and Her Child William S. Sadler

  • The leaders are going to "mull" over the situation?

    Yahoo! News: Business - Opinion 2010

  • I will have to "mull" over it more later - work calls

    doggdot.us 2009

  • So score one for Charlie for getting in the Hill over a "mull".

    Swing State Project 2009

Comments

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  • In the rare/antique book business, the cloth that reinforces a book's hinges. It is pasted directly onto the body of a book and is hidden by the spine.

    February 22, 2007

  • My first thought is the rumination activity!

    January 9, 2008

  • Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, mulled imposing martial law if necessary to advance his homicidal campaign against drugs.

    菲律宾总统罗德里格·杜特尔特,认为如果有必要推进杀气腾腾的反毒品运动,他将考虑实行军事手段。mull=think

    February 4, 2017