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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

mush.

A somewhat liquid mess, often of food; a soft or semisolid substance.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/mʌʃ/Received-Pronunciation, US/mʊʃ/Ireland, Northern-England, US
  1. A somewhat liquid mess, often of food; a soft or semisolid substance.

    countable · uncountable
  2. A mixture of noise produced by the harmonics of continuous-wave stations.

    countable · uncountable
  3. The foam of a breaker.

    countable · uncountable
  4. A magmatic body containing a significant proportion of crystals suspended in the liquid phase or melt.

    countable · uncountable
  5. A gun.

    Multicultural-London-English · countable · uncountable
    Do you want me to back out the mush, bruv?
Where this word comes from

Probably a variant of mash, or from a dialectal variant of Middle English mos (“mush, pulp, porridge”); compare Middle English appelmos (“applesauce”), from Old English mōs (“food, victuals, porridge, mush”), from Proto-West Germanic *mōs, from Proto-Germanic *mōsą (“porridge, food”), from Proto-Indo-European *meh₂d- (“wet, fat, dripping”). Cognate with Scots moosh (“mush”), Dutch moes (“pulp, mush, porridge”), German Mus (“jam, puree, mush”), Swedish mos (“pulp, mash, mush”).

verb/mʌʃ/Received-Pronunciation, US/mʊʃ/Ireland, Northern-England, US
  1. To squish so as to break into smaller pieces or to combine with something else.

    He mushed the ingredients together.
Where this word comes from

Probably a variant of mash, or from a dialectal variant of Middle English mos (“mush, pulp, porridge”); compare Middle English appelmos (“applesauce”), from Old English mōs (“food, victuals, porridge, mush”), from Proto-West Germanic *mōs, from Proto-Germanic *mōsą (“porridge, food”), from Proto-Indo-European *meh₂d- (“wet, fat, dripping”). Cognate with Scots moosh (“mush”), Dutch moes (“pulp, mush, porridge”), German Mus (“jam, puree, mush”), Swedish mos (“pulp, mash, mush”).

noun/mʌʃ/UK, US
  1. A food comprising cracked or rolled grains cooked in water or milk; porridge.

    countable · uncountable
  2. Cornmeal cooked in water and served as a porridge or as a thick sidedish like grits or mashed potatoes.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From Old High German muos and Goidelic mus (“a pap”) or muss (“a porridge”), or any thick preparation of fruit.

intj/mʌʃ/Received-Pronunciation/mʊʃ/Received-Pronunciation/mʌʃ/Canada, General-American
  1. A directive given (usually to dogs or a horse) to start moving, or to move faster.

Where this word comes from

Believed to be a contraction of mush on, from Michif, in turn a corruption of French marche (“march”) or marchons!, the cry of voyageurs and coureurs de bois to their dogs. Marche and marchons are respectively the second-person singular and first-person plural imperative forms of marcher (“to move; to travel; to walk”), from Middle French marcher, from Old French marchier, from Frankish *markōn, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *markōną (“to mark; to notice”).

noun/mʌʃ/Received-Pronunciation/mʊʃ/Received-Pronunciation/mʌʃ/Canada, General-American
  1. A walk, especially across the snow with dogs.

Where this word comes from

Believed to be a contraction of mush on, from Michif, in turn a corruption of French marche (“march”) or marchons!, the cry of voyageurs and coureurs de bois to their dogs. Marche and marchons are respectively the second-person singular and first-person plural imperative forms of marcher (“to move; to travel; to walk”), from Middle French marcher, from Old French marchier, from Frankish *markōn, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *markōną (“to mark; to notice”).

verb/mʌʃ/Received-Pronunciation/mʊʃ/Received-Pronunciation/mʌʃ/Canada, General-American
  1. To walk, especially across the snow with dogs.

    intransitive
  2. To drive dogs, usually pulling a sled, across the snow.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

Believed to be a contraction of mush on, from Michif, in turn a corruption of French marche (“march”) or marchons!, the cry of voyageurs and coureurs de bois to their dogs. Marche and marchons are respectively the second-person singular and first-person plural imperative forms of marcher (“to move; to travel; to walk”), from Middle French marcher, from Old French marchier, from Frankish *markōn, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *markōną (“to mark; to notice”).

noun/mʌʃ/UK, US
  1. A magic mushroom.

    Quebec · slang
Where this word comes from

Simple contraction of mushroom.

noun/mʊʃ/UK
  1. (US, slang, chiefly Nonantum) A form of address, normally to a man.

    Southern-England · UK · slang
    Oy mush, come over here and gimme a hand with the motor.
  2. The face.

    Australia · Northern-England · UK · slang
Where this word comes from

From Angloromani mush (“man”), from Romani mursh, from Sanskrit मनुष्य (manuṣya, “human being, man”).

noun
  1. A cab driver who is the owner of their cab, and sometimes a small number of other cabs as well; a musher.

    London · slang
Where this word comes from

Possibly from mush (“to drive dogs, usually pulling a sled, across snow”, verb), or mush (“(slang, rare) umbrella”, noun) (a clipping of mushroom, from the similar appearance; referring to drivers shielding passengers with umbrellas in rainy weather).

verb
  1. To notch, cut, or indent (cloth, etc.) with a stamp.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

Compare French moucheter (“to cut with small cuts”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.