Originally in the Dictionary of the Scots Language www.dsl.ac.uk to mump meant to “to twitch the lips in a succession of rapid movements, especially characteristic of the nibbling of a rabbit, sheep or toothless person”. Tobias Smollet paints a vivid picture in this example from The Adventures of Roderick Random published in 1748: “When he mumped or spoke they [his nose and chin] approached one another like a pair of nutcrackers.”

We Scots, however, do like our words for complainers and grumblers. Mump seems to have transferred its meaning to our modern understanding, as defined in the DSL “To grumble, to complain peevishly” in the early nineteenth century as this line from the Renfrewshire poet E Pickens shows: “Whiles my plaint I mamp an’ mummle.” (1813). In the twentieth century we have someone being offered a lesson in mumping, this from Augustus Muir’s 1926 novel The Blue Bonnet: “Hector . . . was silent . . . muckle McNab broke the silence. “We’ll learn ye to mump”, he growled.” 

In the late twentieth century we are still complaining as shown in this poem by Douglas Kynoch in the New Makars Anthology from 1991: “Melpomene was mumpin, An her een were rubbit red. She lookit unco dowie, As gin somebody was deid.”. The phrase to mump and moan is show in this 1993 example from an Argyllshire informant: “Plenty to mump and moan about.”

The person who grumbles is recorded the length and breadth of Scotland from Shetland 

to the Borders in the early 2000s with this curt example recorded from an Aberdonian informant: “He’s a richt mump.”

Scots Word of the Week is written by Pauline Cairns Speitel of Scottish Language Dictionaries