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The meaning and origin of the expression: Mum's the word


Mum's the word


Keep quiet - say nothing.




Thou mightest beter meten the myst on Malverne hulles
Then geten a mom of heore mouth til moneye weore schewed!


Mum's the wordAs old as Piers Plowman, and as central to English folklore, is the tradition of mumming. Sadly, no complete texts of the mediaeval mummers' plays have been preserved. There was never a definitive version in any case, as the acting, dancing, drinking and alms collecting that made up mumming varied from one parish to another. We can't be sure what mediaeval mumming plays were like, but a raucous mixture of pantomime, morris dancing and carol singing, played out by a group of bizarre characters in stylised fancy dress, is what has come down to us by oral tradition.

What we do know is that 'mumming', or 'miming' as it was sometimes called, derives from the word 'mum'. Early versions of mumming involved a parade of characters entering houses to dance or play games in silence, that is, 'miming'. More recently, the tradition has evolved to almost always include the character of a quack doctor, who revives the hero (usually Saint George) after his death in a fight with the Turkish Knight (boo, hiss).



Of course, we can't examine a Tudor phrase without Shakespeare getting in on the act, and he used 'mum' in Henry VI, Part 2, 1592:


'Mum's the word' later became the standard way of advising a person to keep quiet and the first citation of it in print that I have found is in A Walk Around London and Westminster - The Works of Mr. Thomas Brown, 1720:
