Mum

How to spell mum

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce mum

What does mum mean?

1. nounAn informal word for one's mother, standard in British and Canadian usage.
2. adjectiveSilent; saying nothing, especially in the phrase 'keep mum'.
3. nounAn informal short form of chrysanthemum, a popular autumn garden flower.

Mum in a sentence

• noun

  My mum drove me to the station every morning before work.

• adjective

  The staff were told to stay mum about the merger until Friday.

• noun

  She planted a bright orange mum beside the porch steps for the fall.

• noun

  She rang her mum to thank her for the birthday card.

• adjective

  He kept mum about the surprise party so his wife would not find out.

• noun

  The garden centre sold every potted mum before the first frost.

Where does mum come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This little word actually carries several separate stories that happen to share a spelling. The 'silent' sense is the oldest: in Middle English 'mum' was simply written down to imitate the closed-lipped sound a person makes when refusing to speak, and it is the same root that gave us 'mumble' and 'mummer', a masked performer who acts without talking. The 'mother' sense arose much later from 'mamma', itself drawn from the easy 'ma' sounds babies make first, and British and Canadian English settled on 'mum' where American English settled on 'mom'. The plant sense is the newest and the plainest: it is just a clipped, informal short form of 'chrysanthemum', a Greek-derived name meaning 'golden flower'. Because the word is so short and phonetically regular, none of these senses ever poses a real spelling problem; the only thing a writer must remember is the regional choice between 'mum' and 'mom' for a parent.

How the word is built

• mum (a complete, unanalysable root; in the 'mother' sense an affectionate reduction of 'mamma', in the 'silent' sense an imitation of a closed-mouth sound)