mumchance

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“
Then we are told how Wardle proposed Mr. Pickwick; Mr. Pickwick, the old lady; Snodgrass, Tupman, the poor relations, all had their speeches; but there is not a single word of Trundle, who appears to have been mumchance--no one wanted him.

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Definitions (4)

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  1. A game of hazard with cards or dice in which silence was absolutely necessary. In comes the setter with his cards, and asketh at what game they shal play. Why, saith the verser, at a new game called mum-chance, that hath no policie nor knaverie, but plain as a pike staf: you shal shuffle and ile cut; you shal cal a carde, and this honest man, a stranger almost to us both, shal cal another for me, and which of our cards comes first shal win. Greene, Conny-Catching (1591). But leaving cardes, lett's go to dice awhile, To passage, treitrippe, hazarde, or mum-chance. Machiavell's Dogg (1617), sig. B. (Nares.)
  2. One who has not a word to say for himself; a fool. Why stand ye like a mum -chance ? What, are ye tongue-ty'd? Plautus made English (1694). (Nares.) Methinks you look like Mumchance, that was hanged for saying nothing. Swift, Polite Conversation, i.
  3. Silence. Huloet.
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Examples (37)

  • Then we are told how Wardle proposed Mr. Pickwick; Mr. Pickwick, the old lady; Snodgrass, Tupman, the poor relations, all had their speeches; but there is not a single word of Trundle, who appears to have been mumchance--no one wanted him. —  Pickwickian Studies
  • I hate to see you sit mumchance, saying nothing There's nothing to do," I said, sadly, "only wait What, like a prisoner? —  To The West
  • Come, I know what I have heard them say, when some men had money that wrought hard enough for it; and do you conceive they will be better pleased when they shall be told that upon like occasions you are at mumchance or stool-ball I do not speak for myself; for though I shall always acknowledge that I got more by one year's sitting in the house than by my three years' travels, it was not of that kind. —  The Commonwealth of Oceana
  • Here the man is, at least, safe home, in favor and in power; and a prudent youth will just hold his tongue, mumchance, and swim with the stream But that's just what makes me mad; to see this fellow, after deserting us there in unknown seas, win credit and rank at home here for being the first man who ever sailed back through the Straits. —  Westward Ho!, or, the voyages and adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the county of Devon, in the reign of her most glorious majesty Queen Elizabeth
  • "Tell her so, for she sits there mumchance, and obliges me to find more inventions than three authors for one piece If Esther turns prudish, just let me know," said Carlos. —  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
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Etymologies (1)

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  1. = German mummenschanz; as mum + chance.
 

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