mush
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mush¹
- /mʌʃ/ UK, US
- /mʊʃ/ Ireland, Northern England, US
Rhymes with -ʌʃ, -ʊʃ
Where it 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 mushes · moosh
- A somewhat liquid mess, often of food; a soft or semisolid substance. His food is of the coarsest kind, consisting for the most part of cornmeal mush, which often finds its way from the wooden tray to his mouth in an oyster shell.
- A mixture of noise produced by the harmonics of continuous-wave stations.
- The foam of a breaker. And Rincon was all about surfing. Flash back thirty-odd years, to a skinny kid on a Styrofoam belly-board, pin-wheeling out into the mush of Jacksonville Beach, Florida.
- A magmatic body containing a significant proportion of crystals suspended in the liquid phase or melt.
- A gun. Do you want me to back out the mush, bruv?
verb mushes · mushing · mushed · moosh
- To squish so as to break into smaller pieces or to combine with something else. He mushed the ingredients together.
mush²
- /mʌʃ/ UK, US
Rhymes with -ʌʃ
Where it comes from
From Old High German muos and Goidelic mus (“a pap”) or muss (“a porridge”), or any thick preparation of fruit.
noun mushes
- A food comprising cracked or rolled grains cooked in water or milk; porridge.
- Cornmeal cooked in water and served as a porridge or as a thick sidedish like grits or mashed potatoes. However, they did make and sometimes even bake cornmeal mushes that could be either sweetened or fortified with fat.
mush³
- /mʌʃ/ UK
- /mʊʃ/ UK
- /mʌʃ/ Canada, US
Rhymes with -ʌʃ
Where it 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”).
interjection
- A directive given (usually to dogs or a horse) to start moving, or to move faster. "An' of course the dogs can hike along all day with that contraption behind them," affirmed a second of the men. / "Certainly," said Hal, with freezing politeness, taking hold of the gee-pole with one hand and swinging his whip from the other. "Mush!" he shouted. "Mush on there!" / The dogs sprang a
noun mushes
- A walk, especially across the snow with dogs. The White House posted a cartoon to X on Wednesday of two Greenlandic mush teams with three huskies each, pointing towards the choice of the white pillars and the South Lawn or a tempestuous scene by the Great Wall of China and Red Square in Russia.
verb mushes · mushing · mushed
- To walk, especially across the snow with dogs. [skiing] It's as beautiful as you always described it, Sam. / I think we'd make better time on the dog sled. You in the mood to mush?
- To drive dogs, usually pulling a sled, across the snow. Together the two men loaded and lashed the sled. They warmed their hands for the last time, pulled on their mittens, and mushed the dogs over the bank and down to the river-trail.
mush⁴
- /mʌʃ/ UK, US
Rhymes with -ʌʃ
Where it comes from
Simple contraction of mushroom.
noun mushes
-
A magic mushroom.
Similar: shroom
mush⁵
- /mʊʃ/ UK
Rhymes with -ʊʃ
Where it comes from
From Angloromani mush (“man”), from Romani mursh, from Sanskrit मनुष्य (manuṣya, “human being, man”).
mush⁶
Where it 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).
noun mushes
- A cab driver who is the owner of their cab, and sometimes a small number of other cabs as well; a musher.
mush⁷
Where it comes from
Compare French moucheter (“to cut with small cuts”).
verb mushes · mushing · mushed
- To notch, cut, or indent (cloth, etc.) with a stamp.
Mush⁸
Where it comes from
Borrowed from Armenian Մուշ (Muš).
proper noun Muş
- A historically Armenian city in the Turuberan province of Greater Armenia, now in eastern Turkey.
- A province of Turkey.
MUSH⁹
Where it comes from
Modelled on earlier MUD; usually explained as "multi-user shared hallucination" (or "hack", "habitat", etc.).
noun MUSHes
- A form of multi-user dungeon, often used for online social intercourse and role-playing games.
Thesaurus
Closest in meaning: cornmeal mush, slurry, pulp, giddyap, forward, compound, composed, gae, cornmeal, pablum, pap, oatmeal, cereal, porridge, pudding, samp
Translations
Every language
noun semiliquid substance
| 中文 | 糊状物 hú zhuàng wù |
|---|---|
| Deutsch | Matsch, Brei |
| Italiano | poltiglia, pastone |
| Русский | каша káša |
verb to squish so as to break into smaller pieces or to combine with something else
| Italiano | sminuzzare, spezzettare |
|---|---|
| Русский | заме́шивать zaméšivatʹ |
noun food comprising cracked or rolled grains cooked in water or milk, porridge
| Español | gachas de harina de maíz |
|---|---|
| Deutsch | Maisbrei, Polenta |
| Ελληνικά | παπάρα papára |
noun slang: magic mushrooms
| Español | champi |
|---|
name province
| 中文 | 穆什 Mùshí |
|---|
Talk about this word "mush." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/mush. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026. mush. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/mush "mush." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/mush.Cite this
@misc{mush_2026,
title = {mush},
howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
year = {2026},
url = {https://micwyn.com/word/mush},
urldate = {2026-11-06}
}
