Mug

How to spell mug

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce mug

What does mug mean?

1. nounA large cup with a handle, used for hot drinks.
2. verbTo attack and rob someone, especially in a public place.
3. nounA person's face, used informally.
4. nounA gullible or foolish person who is easily deceived.

Mug in a sentence

• noun

  She poured the coffee into her favourite mug.

• verb

  Thieves often mug tourists near the crowded station.

• noun

  The wanted poster showed his ugly mug on every wall.

• noun

  He felt like a complete mug after paying double the real price.

• noun

  The office kitchen was full of dirty dishes and one chipped mug.

• verb

  The police warned that someone might mug pedestrians in the unlit alley.

Where does mug come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The origin of mug is genuinely uncertain, which is why dictionaries flag it with caution. The drinking-vessel sense appears in English from the late sixteenth century and is most often traced to a Scandinavian source, comparing Swedish 'mugg' and Norwegian dialect 'mugge', both meaning a jug or pitcher. From the plain idea of a heavy cup with a handle, the word branched out in colourful directions. In the eighteenth century 'mug' came to mean a person's face, very likely because grotesque, comically faced drinking mugs were popular at the time. From the face sense grew the nineteenth-century verb meaning to attack and rob someone, originally suggesting a blow to the face, and the British slang 'mug' for a gullible fool, the sort of person easily taken in. Because all these meanings sit on one short, regular spelling, the trap is never the letters but choosing the right sense.

How the word is built

• mug (single root; no prefix or suffix)