mum

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“
Since my mum is a teacher there, I can assure you that you are wrong.

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Definitions (21)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (8)

  1. adjective Not verbalizing; silent.
  2. interjection Used as a command to stop speaking.
  3. idiom mum's the word Say nothing of the secret you know: Mum's the word on the surprise party.
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Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (5)

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Examples (39)

  • I keep telling him he can't have done because they never stayed overnight with the folks, and his mum was always around in the daytime. —  Disordered Minds
  • However, my mum was always with me when I went "paddling" (just in case I drowned in the 8 inches of water) so maybe therein lies a possible solution???? —  Nanny Knows Best
  • Wentworth's ancestry is complicated enough to put even Johnny Depp to shame - his mum is Russian, French, Syrian, Lebanese and Dutch, while his dad is African-American, Jamaican, English, German and Cherokee. —  Wentworth Miller Online
  • I now have a little boy, he's two weeks old and when him and his mum were asleep during my paternity leave and Diagnosis Murder wasn't on I set about compiling a spotify playlist for him. —  Word Magazine -
  • When my mum was a child she would play at Fisherrow, a harbour then that was full of fishing boats.
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Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

dad ·  no-one ·  phil ·  well
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (8)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (4)

  1. Middle English, perhaps imitative of closing one's lips.
  2. Middle English mummen, from Old French momer, to wear a mask.
  3. Short for mummy2.
  4. German Mumme.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (4)

  1. from Middle English mum, mom, used interjectionally, expressing a low murmuring sound made with the lips closed, used at once to attract attention and to command silence; an imitative syllable, the basis of the verbs mumble, mump, mum, and their numerous cognates; cf. Latin mu, Greek μῦ, a mere murmured syllable; also murmur, and similar ult. imitative words.
  2. from Middle English mummen = Dutch mommem = German mummem, mumble, mutter; imitative of the sound: see mum, a. Cf. mumble, mump.
  3. Also mumm; from Middle English *mommen, from Old French momer, from Middle Dutch mommen, Dutch mommen (= German mummen), mask, play the mummer, from Middle Dutch momme, Dutch mom = German mumme, a mask; cf. German mummel, a hobgoblin, bugbear; supposed to have been used orig., in connection with the syllable mum, by nurses to frighten or amuse children, at the same time pretending to cover their faces: see mum.
  4. = Dutch mom = Danish mumme, from German mumme, a kind of beer, said to be so named from Christian Mumme, who first brewed it, in 1492.
 

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