Word.ws English Dictionary

mumming

mumming is the present participle and gerund of mum.

mumming is the present participle and gerund of mumm.

Meaning of mum

Verb

mum (third-person singular simple present mums, present participle mumming, simple past and past participle mummed)

  1. To act in a pantomime or dumb show.
  2. (UK, obsolete, slang, transitive) To silence.
    • "Well, Sal, you mum your dubber pretty generally, but when you do slacken your glib you may as well do it civilly."1857, Hidden Links; Or the Schoolfellows. A Tale, volume 2, page 233

See all 11 meanings of mum

Noun

mumming (countable and uncountable, plural mummings)

  1. A pantomime or dumb show.
    • The vassals or tenants collected in the hall for Christmas masking and mumming—the peasant gathering that May-day called out upon the green, drew together ranks whose distance, in our day, occasions forgetfulness on one side, and discontent on the other.1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Romance and Reality. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, pages 280–281
    • The court masque has its origin in medieval court mummings.2011, Susan Lauffer O'Hara, The Theatricality of Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus
    Synonyms:
    mummering

Synonyms of mumming

Forms of mumming

pluralmummings

Words that rhyme with mumming

Questions about mumming

What does mumming mean?
Mumming means a pantomime or dumb show.
What is mumming the present participle and gerund of?
Mumming is the present participle and gerund of mum.
What part of speech is mumming?
Mumming is a noun.
What is the plural of mumming?
The plural of mumming is mummings.

Words near mumming in the dictionary

  1. mummifies
  2. mummiform
  3. mummiforms
  4. mummify
  5. mummifying
  6. mumming
  7. mummings
  8. mummiologist
  9. mummiologists
  10. mummiology
  11. mummiya

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mumming (page history and authors); mum (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: “mumming.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mumming. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.