Word.ws English Dictionary

mumchance

UK/ˈmʌm.tʃɑːns/US/ˈmʌm.t͡ʃæns/

mumchance adjective: mute, or not speaking; silent.

Adjective

mumchance (comparative more mumchance, superlative most mumchance)

  1. Mute, or not speaking; silent.
    • There is something exceedingly unpleasant in being obliged to answer "No," to a traveller's "Pray, Sir, were you ever abroad?" and to sit mum-chance all the time that he is running over the "grimoire" of outlandish technicalities. For my own part, I am convinced that man is, par excellence, a...1821, “M.” [pseudonym], “The Traveller”, in The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, volume II (Original Papers), number XII, London: Henry Colburn and Co. […], →OCLC, page 544
    • I wrote Miss Crane off as mediocre because although she chatted quite pleasantly and intelligently over coffee she was mostly mumpchance at the dinner table. Oh, not mumpchance tout court.1966, Paul Scott, The Jewel in the Crown, page 69

Noun

mumchance (countable and uncountable, plural mumchances)

  1. An old game of chance played with cards in silence.
    • The Taker oꝛ the Verſer is the man muſt play with him, the Cardes are fetch, Mumchance oꝛ Decoy is the game: the firſt wager is Wine, the ſecond two pence in money, from two pence they riſe to a ſhilling, from that to a pound, […]1608, [Thomas Dekker], “Of Barnards Law”, in The Belman of London. […], London: […] [Edward Allde and Nicholas Okes] for Nathaniel Butter, →OCLC, signature F2, recto
    • Bear and wolf, look to your prisoner—prance, hobby—hiss, dragon, and halloo, boys—we grow older every moment we stand idle, and life is too short to be spent in playing mumchance.1820, [Walter Scott], chapter XV, in The Abbot. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Company, and...
  2. A silent, stupid person.
    • I'm not such a mumchance, to be sure, but I've as good a fortune1830, Mary Leman Grimstone, Louisa Egerton

Forms of mumchance

Adjective
comparativemore mumchance
superlativemost mumchance
Noun
pluralmumchances

Origin of mumchance

From Middle English mommen (“mutter, be silent”) and Middle High German mummenschantze (“game of chance as part of a masquerade, mime performance, revel”), from Old French momen (“mask”) and chance (“game of chance”).

Questions about mumchance

What does mumchance mean?
Mumchance means mute, or not speaking; silent.
What part of speech is mumchance?
Mumchance can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce mumchance?
Mumchance is pronounced /ˈmʌm.tʃɑːns/ (UK).

Words near mumchance in the dictionary

  1. mumbo-jumbo
  2. mumbo-jumbos
  3. Mumbulla Mountain
  4. Mumby
  5. Mumbys
  6. mumchance
  7. mumchances
  8. mumetal
  9. mumfluencer
  10. mumfluencers
  11. Mumford

Source and license

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