mouthing
- 1Present participle of mouth.
The actor was mouthing his lines while the crew adjusted the lights.
She caught him mouthing something to her behind the teacher's back.
Note
One verb, two opposite noises. The participle covers silent speech, shaping words without sound as when mouthing an answer across a room, and also the overloud, swelling delivery of a declaiming actor. Only context tells them apart. It also covers lips that hold something without chewing it. The silent use underlies the sign-language term; the loud one underlies empty ranting.
- 2The act of shaping the lips and mouth into a word, especially alongside manual signs in sign language.
Interpreters often add mouthing to clarify signs that share similar hand shapes.
Her mouthing of each word accompanied the signs so beginners could follow along.
Note
A sign-language term that counts. Linguists speak of mouthings in the plural, each a separate shaping of the lips that rides along with a manual sign. The Oxford Handbook of Sociolinguistics (2013), by Bayley, Cameron and Lucas, notes that they appear most with nouns, open-class words and simpler signs. Here the lips carry the word silently, alongside the hands.
- 3Loud, passionate speech that carries strong feeling but no real meaning.
The crowd quickly grew bored with the senator's empty mouthing.
Her statement was pure mouthing: full of fire, short on substance.
Similarrhetoric, bluster, bombast, ranting, posturing
Note
Usually plural and usually empty. Players Magazine in 1941 praised an actor who "did not deafen you with heroics and empty mouthings." That line shows the word's company: it pairs naturally with empty and sits beside rant and heroics. It grows from the overloud sense of the verb behind the participle. Use it for passionate delivery with nothing inside.
Less common meaning
- 4Present participle of mouthe (rare).
Note
A spelling you cannot see on the page. Whether the base is the modern verb or its rare variant mouthe, the -ing form comes out the same, because the final e drops before the suffix. Mouthe survives only as a rare verb and an obsolete spelling of the noun. In practice, read this form as the ordinary participle.
Showing meanings only.
mouthing is a form of mouth
mouth, verb: To move the lips or shape words or air with the mouth, with or without sound. Full entry
- Spelling
- mouth → mouthing: add -ing
Practice
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