Definitions

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

  • noun A stinking tobacco.

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

  • noun obsolete Offal; waste animal product; organic matter unfit for consumption.
  • noun archaic Poor-quality tobacco with a foul, rancid, or putrid smell.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the Spanish mondongo ("tripe”, “entrails"), perhaps viâ its English etymon mondongo.

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Examples

  • So saying, she sat down to her wheel, and seized, while she spun, her jet-black cutty pipe, from which she soon sent such clouds of vile mundungus vapour as must have cleared the premises of Lady Penelope, had she not been strong in purpose to share the expected confession of the invalid.

    Saint Ronan's Well 2008

  • I secretly think John wanted to give Old Jarhead an excuse to use ‘mundungus’ in a conversation…

    Single Word Open Thread #1 « Whatever 2007

  • I am a misocapnist, particularly when someone is using mundungus with nepheligenous results.

    Single Word Open Thread #1 « Whatever 2007

  • It did not indeed in the least resemble tea, either in smell or taste, or in any particular, unless in being a leaf; for it was in truth no other than a tobacco of the mundungus species.

    The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon 2004

  • Jenkins, is eloquent exceedingly upon the _narcotine_ of fashionable life: declares that its soothing influences were unequalled by vapour of purest mundungus, or acetate of morphia, or even pill of opium, blended intimately with glass of _eau-de-vie_.

    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 327, January, 1843 Various

  • It did not indeed in the least resemble tea, either in smell or taste, or in any particular, unless in being a leaf; for it was in truth no other than a tobacco of the mundungus species.

    The Works of Henry Fielding, Volume Six: Miscellanies 1900

  • At a dinner which was given at Trinity College, Cambridge, to the Duke of Gloucester, as Chancellor of the University, when the cloth was removed, Parr at once started his pipe and began, says one who was present, "blowing a cloud into the faces of his neighbours, much to their annoyance, and causing royalty to sneeze by the stimulating stench of mundungus."

    The Social History of Smoking George Latimer Apperson 1897

  • I stick to my own mundungus; any novelty disturbs my thoughts.

    Our Friend the Charlatan George Gissing 1880

  • So saying, she sat down to her wheel, and seized, while she spun, her jet-black cutty pipe, from which she soon sent such clouds of vile mundungus vapour as must have cleared the premises of Lady Penelope, had she not been strong in purpose to share the expected confession of the invalid.

    St. Ronan's Well Walter Scott 1801

  • English travellers, neither of the smellfungus, the mundungus, or she sentimental-sans-sentiment, tribe, set out from Paris, on their return to the metropolis of their own country.

    Francis, the Philanthropist: an unfashionable tale 1786

Comments

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  • It means malodorous tobacco.

    December 22, 2007

  • "'If you have finished, Stephen, pray smoke away. I am sure you bought some of your best mundungus in Mahon.'"

    --Patrick O'Brian, The Ionian Mission, 212

    February 14, 2008

  • Ah-ha! J.K. Rowling has an amazing vocabulary. Totally thought that this word was madeupical.

    February 14, 2008

  • "Bad or rank tobacco; from mondongo, a Spanish word signifying tripes, or the uncleaned entrails of a beast, full of filth."

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1811.

    September 5, 2008

  • "Ubu burns unburnt mundungus."

    Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 78

    May 22, 2010

  • Easy to remember word. just think mun"DUNG"us.

    July 29, 2011

  • But how do you remember what it means?

    July 29, 2011

  • Beyoootiful! Always something new to love

    July 29, 2011

  • Carousing had utterly wrung us
    And left no drink nor coin among us.
    So, pale and disheveled,
    We ended our revels
    By fading in a cloud of mundungus.

    July 12, 2014

  • 'Twould ha'been tolerable, were funbrungus.

    July 13, 2014