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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

mute.

Not having the power of speech; dumb.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/mjuːt/Received-Pronunciation/mjʉwt/British, Southern, Standard/mjut/General-American/mɪu̯t/Wales
  1. Not having the power of speech; dumb.

  2. Silent; not making a sound.

  3. Not uttered; unpronounced; silent; also, produced by complete closure of the mouth organs which interrupt the passage of breath; said of certain letters.

  4. Not giving a ringing sound when struck; said of a metal.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English muet, from Anglo-Norman muet, moet, Middle French muet, from mu (“dumb, mute”) + -et, remodelled after Latin mūtus.

noun/mjuːt/Received-Pronunciation/mjʉwt/British, Southern, Standard/mjut/General-American/mɪu̯t/Wales
  1. A stopped consonant; a stop.

    obsolete
  2. An actor who does not speak; a mime performer.

    obsolete
  3. A person who does not have the power of speech.

  4. A hired mourner at a funeral; an undertaker's assistant.

  5. An object for dulling the sound of an instrument, especially a brass instrument, or damper for pianoforte; a sordine.

  6. An electronic switch or control that mutes the sound.

  7. A mute swan.

  8. An action of muting, especially in a discussion forum as a penalty for breaking rules.

    Internet
Where this word comes from

From Middle English muet, from Anglo-Norman muet, moet, Middle French muet, from mu (“dumb, mute”) + -et, remodelled after Latin mūtus.

verb/mjuːt/Received-Pronunciation/mjʉwt/British, Southern, Standard/mjut/General-American/mɪu̯t/Wales
  1. To silence, to make quiet.

    transitive
  2. To turn off the sound of.

    transitive
    Please mute the music while I make a call.
  3. To cause the content or messages of (a social media account, a website, etc.) to no longer appear on one's feed, trigger notifications, or similar, especially without fully blocking.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English muet, from Anglo-Norman muet, moet, Middle French muet, from mu (“dumb, mute”) + -et, remodelled after Latin mūtus.

verb/mjuːt/Received-Pronunciation/mjʉwt/British, Southern, Standard/mjut/General-American/mɪu̯t/Wales
  1. Of a bird: to defecate.

    archaic
Where this word comes from

From Middle French muetir, probably a shortened form of esmeutir, ultimately from Proto-Germanic.

noun/mjuːt/Received-Pronunciation/mjʉwt/British, Southern, Standard/mjut/General-American/mɪu̯t/Wales
  1. The faeces of a hawk or falcon.

Where this word comes from

From Middle French muetir, probably a shortened form of esmeutir, ultimately from Proto-Germanic.

verb/mjuːt/Received-Pronunciation/mjʉwt/British, Southern, Standard/mjut/General-American/mɪu̯t/Wales
  1. To cast off; to moult.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

From Latin mutare (“to change”).

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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.