Word.ws English Dictionary

mumps

/mʌmps/

mumps noun: a contagious disease caused by the Mumps virus of the genus Rubulavirus, mostly occurring in childhood, which causes swelling of glands in the face and neck. Also the third-person singular simple present indicative of mump.

Noun

mumps pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) A contagious disease caused by the Mumps virus of the genus Rubulavirus, mostly occurring in childhood, which causes swelling of glands in the face and neck.
    • At issue is the so-called MMR vaccine, which immunizes children against measles, mumps and rubella, three potentially deadly diseases that were once common and have been mostly wiped out.2002 February 10, Sarah Lyall, “Britain Tries to Quell Fear Over Vaccine for Children”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 14 Feb 2021
  2. (dated, plural, plural-only) A gloomy or sullen silence.

Proper noun capitalized: MUMPS

MUMPS

  1. (abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System, a programming language (and database) developed originally to be specifically for hierarchically arranged records, such as medical records.

Also used as

mumps is also the third-person singular simple present indicative of mump.

mumps is also the plural of mump.

mumps meaning in Malayalam, Tagalog, Arabic and Indonesian

mumps in Malayalam

contagious disease
മുണ്ടിനീര് muṇṭinīrŭ

mumps in Tagalog

contagious disease
beke, buklaw

mumps in Arabic

contagious disease
نُكَاف nukāf

mumps in Indonesian

contagious disease
beguk
More languagesFewer languages
mumps in Persian
اوریون oreyon
mumps in Vietnamese
quai bị, chàm bàm

Origin of mumps

Circa 1600, from mump (“grimace”, noun), compare mump (verb), most likely referring to the painful difficulty in swallowing.

Words formed from mumps

Words that rhyme with mumps

Questions about mumps

What does mumps mean?
Mumps means a contagious disease caused by the Mumps virus of the genus Rubulavirus, mostly occurring in childhood, which causes swelling of glands in the face and neck.
What is mumps in Malayalam?
Mumps in Malayalam is മുണ്ടിനീര് (muṇṭinīrŭ). See Mumps meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is mumps?
Mumps can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce mumps?
Mumps is pronounced /mʌmps/.

Words near mumps in the dictionary

  1. Mumpower
  2. Mumpowers
  3. mumpreneur
  4. mumpreneurs
  5. mumpreneurship
  6. mumps
  7. mumpsimus
  8. mumpsimuses
  9. mumpy
  10. mumruffin
  11. mumruffins

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mumps (page history and authors); MUMPS (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.

Last updated:

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

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