different between ump vs mump

English

Etymology

Clipping of umpire

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?mp/
• Rhymes: -?mp

Noun

ump (plural umps)

1. (sports, informal) An umpire.
   • 2006, Eli Attie and John Wells, The West Wing, season 7, episode 17 “Election Day Part II”:

     If you take it to court, you're the guy who screams at the ump ’cause they don't like the call at the plate.

Translations

Verb

ump (third-person singular simple present umps, present participle umping, simple past and past participle umped)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To act as an umpire (in).
   • 1982, Stephen King, Survivor Type

     On the block when we were growing up we called him Ronnie the Enforcer because he umped all the stickball games and reffed the hockey.

Translations

English

Etymology 1

Perhaps borrowed through obsolete Dutch mompen (“to cheat, swindle, deceive”), according to Kroonen, a derivative of Proto-Germanic *mump- (“to stain”), from Proto-Indo-European *mmb?-neh?-, related to Ancient Greek ???????? (mémphomai, “I blame, accuse”).

Also akin to German mimpfeln (“to mumble”), Icelandic mumpa (“to take into the mouth”). See also English mum.

Verb

mump (third-person singular simple present mumps, present participle mumping, simple past and past participle mumped)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To mumble, speak unclearly.
   • 1773, Oliver Goldsmith, "Epilogue Spoklen by Mrs. Bulkley and Miss Catley [intended for She Stoops to Conquer]":

     Who mump their passion, and who, grimly smiling,

     Still thus address the fair with voice beguiling […]

2. To move the lips with the mouth closed; to mumble, as in sulkiness.
   • 1630, John Taylor, "The Necessitie of Hanging":

     He mumps, and lowres, and hangs the lip […]

3. (intransitive) To beg, especially if using a repeated phrase.
4. To deprive of (something) by cheating; to impose upon.
5. To cheat; to deceive; to play the beggar.
   • 1774, Edmund Burke, "Speech on American Taxation, April 19, 1774":

     Your ministerial directors blustered like tragic tyrants here; and then went mumping with a sore leg in America, canting, and whining, and complaining of faction, which represented them as friends to a revenue from the colonies.

6. To be sullen or sulky.
   • 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture 2:

     The Christian also spurns the pinched and mumping sick-room attitude, and the lives of saints are full of a kind of callousness to diseased conditions of body which probably no other human records show.

   • 1948, James Gould Cozzens, Guard of Honor:

     It remained necessary to make a shift at bearing yourself like a man; not mumping, not moping.

7. (transitive, intransitive) To nibble.
8. (Of a police officer) to accept a small gift or bribe in exchange for services.

Derived terms

• mumper
• Mumping Day

Noun

mump (plural mumps)

1. (obsolete) A grimace.

Etymology 2

Noun

mump (plural mumps)

1. (Britain, dialect, Somerset) A cube of peat; a spade's depth of digging turf.

References

Anagrams

• PMMU