mumming

Pluralmummings

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A performance in which players act out a scene or story through gesture and mime, without speaking.

   Without a single spoken line, the mumming told the whole story of the knight and the dragon.

   The palace accounts record payments for masks worn in the royal mummings at New Year.

   Similarmime, pantomime

   Note

   The noun covers both a seasonal custom and a single performance. Without an article it names the practice, as in Letitia Elizabeth Landon's Romance and Reality (1831), where tenants gather in the hall for Christmas masking and mumming. In the plural it counts separate shows: the court masque has its origin in medieval court mummings. Mummering means the same.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of mum.

   In the village square the players were mumming without a word, and the crowd followed every gesture.

   The troupe went from farm to farm, mumming at each door for a cup of cider.

   Note

   This is the -ing form of mum in its acting sense, the final m doubled before the ending. After be it shows a performance under way (the players were mumming without a word); as a gerund it names the activity and still behaves like a verb, taking adverbs where the noun for the show takes adjectives.

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