Word.ws English Dictionary

mull

/mʌl/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Northern England/mʊl/

mull verb: to work (over) mentally; to cogitate; to ruminate.

Verb

mull (third-person singular simple present mulls, present participle mulling, simple past and past participle mulled)

  1. (usually) To work (over) mentally; to cogitate; to ruminate.
    • to mull a thought or a problem
    • he paused to mull over his various options before making a decision
  2. To powder; to pulverize.
  3. To chop marijuana so that it becomes a smokable form.
  4. To heat and spice something, such as wine.
  5. To join two or more individual windows at mullions.
  6. To dull or stupefy.
  7. (archaic, slang) To bungle or botch.
    • 'That's rather like another plant where a string of pearls was changed some years ago,' volunteered Greatorex, laying aside the paper in favour of his own reminiscences. […]
      'Yes; they mulled that by not copying the sale label closely enough, and the attendant noticed it when the necklace was laid...1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries

Noun (1)

mull (countable and uncountable, plural mulls)

  1. (uncountable) Marijuana that has been chopped to prepare it for smoking.
  2. A stew of meat, broth, milk, butter, vegetables, and seasonings, thickened with soda crackers.
  3. The gauze used in bookbinding to adhere a text block to a book's cover.
  4. An inferior kind of madder prepared from the smaller roots or the peelings and refuse of the larger.
  5. (archaic, slang) A mess of something; a mistake.
    • Mr. HERDMAN. — The honourable member for Nelson says they made a mull of it. If the honourable gentleman had been a financial authority he would never have given expression to such a thought.1904, Parliamentary Debates, New Zealand. Parliament. House of Representatives, page 83
    • After studying the page a bit longer, she made a face. "Good Lord, you've really made a mull of it. Here, let me have a closer look."2014, Andrea Pickens, A Stroke of Luck
  6. (Northern England, dialectal) Dirt, dust, or other waste matter.

Noun (2)

mull (countable and uncountable, plural mulls)

  1. A thin, soft muslin.
    • The merchandise in this case consists of Madras mulls — thin cotton cloth.1891, United States. Department of the Treasury, Synopsis of the Decisions of the Treasury Department on the Construction of the Tariff, Navigation, and Other Laws for the Year Ended ..., page 631
    • Smocking done in colors on fine white batiste, silk mull, or nainsook makes pretty guimpes and dresses for children and very smart blouses for women.1916, “Smocking”, in The Dressmaker: A Complete Book on All Matters Connected with Sewing and Dressmaking […], 2nd revised and enlarged edition, New York, N.Y.; London: The Butterick Publishing...

Noun (3)

mull (plural mulls)

  1. (Scotland) A promontory.
    • the Mull of Kintyre
  2. A snuffbox made of the small end of a horn.
    • Charles Dickens quoted in 1872, John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens
      Much in this manner they exhibit at the door of a snuff-shop the effigy of a Highlander with an empty mull in his hand, who, apparently having taken all the snuff he can carry, and discharged all the sneezes of which he is...

Noun (4)

mull (countable and uncountable, plural mulls)

  1. Friable forest humus that forms a layer of mixed organic matter and mineral soil and merges gradually into the mineral soil beneath.

Proper noun capitalized: Mull

Mull

  1. An island, the second largest in the Inner Hebrides, in Argyll and Bute council area, Scotland.

Noun (5) capitalized: Mull

Mull (plural Mulls)

  1. (obsolete, slang) A member of the Service belonging to the Madras Presidency.
    • The Mulls have been excited also by another occurrence […] affecting rather the trading than fashionable world.1837, Asiatic Journal, page 251
    • […] but the glorious days, when "Qui-hyes" and "Mulls" used to be pitted against each other for first spear, have vanished, […]1844, The New Sporting Magazine, volume 8, page 394

mull meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Indonesian

mull in Tamil

மென்துணி

mull in Urdu

غور کرنا, مصالحہ ملانا, میٹھا کرنا, مطالعہ کرنا

mull in Bengali

গভীরভাবে চিন্তা করা

mull in Indonesian

to work over mentally
mempertimbangkan, memikirkan

Examples of mull in a sentence

  • It was the germ of a thought, which, however, was destined to mull around in his conscious and subconscious mind until it resulted in magnificent achievement.1912 October, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as...
  • But here’s a thought I had as you were speaking just now, and I’m mulling it over.2010, Plato, “Euthyphro”, in Christopher Rowe, transl., The Last Days of Socrates, Penguin Books Ltd., →ISBN, line 9c:

All 19 example sentences with mull

Synonyms of mull

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of mull

Forms of mull

Verb
third-person singular presentmulls
present participlemulling
past participlemulled
pastmulled
Noun
pluralmulls
pluralMulls

Past tense of mull: mulled

Origin of mull

Inherited from Middle English molle, mulle (“dust, rubbish”), possibly from Old English myl (“dust, mould”), from Proto-West Germanic *muli, a deverbal formation from *mulljan and thus cognate with Dutch mul (“dust, mould”), German Müll (“rubbish”), Swedish moln (“cloud”) and related to English mill (“to grind”). Alternatively, from Middle French mol or its etymon Latin mollis (“soft”). Some verbal senses are supplied by Middle English mollen (“to soften, dissolve”), from Old French moillier, from Latin *molliāre (“to steep”), itself from mollis; compare moil.

Shortened from mulmul.

From Scottish Gaelic maol.

Words formed from mull

Phrases with mull

Words that rhyme with mull

4 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about mull

What does mull mean?
Mull means to work (over) mentally; to cogitate; to ruminate.
What is mull in Tamil?
Mull in Tamil is மென்துணி. See Mull meaning in Tamil.
How do you use mull in a sentence?
It was the germ of a thought, which, however, was destined to mull around in his conscious and subconscious mind until it resulted in magnificent achievement.
What part of speech is mull?
Mull can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce mull?
Mull is pronounced /mʌl/ (UK).
What is the past tense of mull?
The past tense of mull is mulled.

Words near mull in the dictionary

  1. mulitmeric
  2. Mulkern
  3. Mulkerns
  4. Mulkey
  5. Mulkeys
  6. mull
  7. Mull of Kintyre
  8. Mull of Kintyre rule
  9. Mull of Kintyre test
  10. mull over
  11. mull up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mull (page history and authors); Mull (page history and authors); mull (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); mull (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); mull (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-mull.wav.

Cite this entry: “mull.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mull. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.