What's the difference between hum and mum?

Hum


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To make a low, prolonged sound, like that of a bee in flight; to drone; to murmur; to buzz; as, a top hums.
  • (v. i.) To make a nasal sound, like that of the letter m prolonged, without opening the mouth, or articulating; to mumble in monotonous undertone; to drone.
  • (v. i.) To make an inarticulate sound, like h'm, through the nose in the process of speaking, from embarrassment or a affectation; to hem.
  • (v. i.) To express satisfaction by a humming noise.
  • (v. i.) To have the sensation of a humming noise; as, my head hums, -- a pathological condition.
  • (v. t.) To sing with shut mouth; to murmur without articulation; to mumble; as, to hum a tune.
  • (v. t.) To express satisfaction with by humming.
  • (v. t.) To flatter by approving; to cajole; to impose on; to humbug.
  • (n.) A low monotonous noise, as of bees in flight, of a swiftly revolving top, of a wheel, or the like; a drone; a buzz.
  • (n.) Any inarticulate and buzzing sound
  • (n.) The confused noise of a crowd or of machinery, etc., heard at a distance; as, the hum of industry.
  • (n.) A buzz or murmur, as of approbation.
  • (n.) An imposition or hoax.
  • (interj.) An inarticulate nasal sound or murmur, like h'm, uttered by a speaker in pause from embarrassment, affectation, etc.
  • (interj.) A kind of strong drink formerly used.
  • (interj.) Ahem; hem; an inarticulate sound uttered in a pause of speech implying doubt and deliberation.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) As he sits in Athens wondering when the International Monetary Fund is going to deliver another bailout, George Papandreou might be tempted to hum a few lines of Tired of Waiting for You.
  • (2) Although the cranes swing, much of the new living zones now being created range from the ho-hum to the outright catastrophic.
  • (3) Mononuclear cells were fractionated from human cord blood by affinity chromatography on immobilized peanut agglutinin, as previously described (Rosenberg et al., Hum Immunol 7:67, 1983).
  • (4) Managers scurry back and forth across the Atlantic with advance copies handcuffed to their wrists, critics are required to sign contracts promising that they will not so much as hum the contents to their nearest and dearest, and the music press acts as if the world is about to witness the most significant release since Nelson Mandela's.
  • (5) He shook his head from side to side, whispering or humming the same three-note tune.
  • (6) The apolipoprotein E3-Leiden variant has been shown to be associated with familial dysbetalipoproteinemia (FD) in a dominant manner (Havekes et al., Hum Genet 1986;73:157-163).
  • (7) The politics of football have long been accompanied by a background hum of corruption claims, but in recent times it has become a cacophony.
  • (8) Selling its own phone would mean it could make itself the background hum of many peoples' lives everywhere – and show adverts and collect data on its own terms.
  • (9) His father, who was fond of humming the popular ballad Keep Right on to the End of the Road, lost his job in the great depression of the early 1930s.
  • (10) Hollow-eyed children beg outside restaurants and cafes that hum with the chatter of shisha-smoking customers.
  • (11) Her hums on early awards buzz Speaking of Oscar contenders, it will be fascinating to see how Spike Jonze's latest movie pans out.
  • (12) That robs astronomy of one of its key recruiting tools: the chance to plant young scientists under the dish and let its hum capture their imagination.
  • (13) Four hours from the Zurich madhouse, Uefa’s base on the shores of Lake Geneva in Nyon hums with calm purpose.
  • (14) He made politics great again in the sense of getting people to care instead of allowing it to hum softly in the background.
  • (15) I am not sure that a lucrative career in rape gags is more helpful than a failed one, but the rape hum seems eternal.
  • (16) "I wouldn't say this agreement was entirely ho-hum but it does not address the big ticket issues.
  • (17) And I think Stephen hummed and hah-ed in an embarrassed fashion.
  • (18) humming, whistling) for atonal melody, but that non-musicians could not use any effective strategies for melody coding.
  • (19) At the moment the noise is like a city humming away.
  • (20) Without the faintest idea what I was humming along to, my mother left me to my obsession with nothing more than a shrug.

Mum


Definition:

  • (a.) Silent; not speaking.
  • (interj.) Be silent! Hush!
  • (n.) Silence.
  • (n.) A sort of strong beer, originally made in Brunswick, Germany.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) At concentrations several hundredfold higher than the equivalents present in the minimum concentration of rat skin soluble collagen required for platelet aggregation, neither Hyl-Gal (at 29 muM) nor Hyl-Gal-Glc (at 18 muM) caused platelet aggregation or inhibited platelet aggregation by native collagen.
  • (2) The outstanding morphologic feature of cortical cells exposed to microunit ACTH concentrations for 40 min was the abundance of electron-dense granules (0.2-0.4 mum).
  • (3) This inclusion, an aggregate 0.3-0.7 mum in size, consists of small membrane-bounded vesicles with a single dense granule associated with other non-membrane bound small dense droplets.
  • (4) Saturation kinetics typical of a carrier-mediated transport system (Kt = 870 muM)were observed, and concentration of fatty acids against a gradient was achieved.
  • (5) Given his background, Boyle says, growing up in a council house near Bury, with his two sisters (one a twin) and his strict and hard-working parents (his mum worked as a dinner lady at his school), he should by rights have been a gritty social realist, but that tradition never appealed to him.
  • (6) Km values for each substrate were: pregnenolone 10 muM, 17alpha-hydroxypregnenolone and dehydroepiandrosterone 2.5 muM and androstenediol 3.0 muM.
  • (7) It will make entering the market more difficult still for new buyers, further highlighting the importance of the right timing, advice, support and financial planning; and not just having a mum and dad who bought a house, but a grandparent, too.” Average UK house price reaches £288,000 Read more The average property price in the UK, currently £283,565, is expected to double by 2030, breaking through the £500,000 mark to £557,444.
  • (8) I met a mum there who said to me – this is what I’ve dreamed of for my child... ...proper uniforms, high standards... ...this is going to give my child a good start in life.
  • (9) The writer John Lanchester concedes that democracies will always need spies, but reading the Snowden documents persuaded him that piecing together habits of thought from internet searches takes things far beyond conventional spying: “Google doesn’t just know you’re gay before you tell your mum; it knows you’re gay before you do.
  • (10) The type I neurons (27 X 43 mum) with four to seven primary dendrites were located mainly in the rostral and ventral areas of the LH.
  • (11) Heavy tracks have LET values in excess of 4 keV mum-1 in water.
  • (12) sp., from Chalcophaps i. indica, has three or four testes, and a cirrus pouch 93 to 108 mum long, 28 to 45 mum wide, and its egg capsules are 10 to 12 mum long, seven to nine mum wide, each containing four to six eggs.
  • (13) You’d be staggered by the number of dimwitted debutantes who stand for photos next to cakes iced with the famous double-C. You know how you wanted a Spider-Man cake when you were little, and your mum made you Spider-Man cake, and it was the happiest birthday of your life?
  • (14) If the ionophore (10 muM) is perifused for 5 min at low extracellular calcium and magnesium, and physiologic calcium is then added, a sudden spike of insulin release occurs in the absence of cyclic AMP generation.
  • (15) This week, after much soul-searching, she is packing up her house to move to Shropshire so that “my mum can look after me”.
  • (16) I'm having a civil partnership ceremony in six weeks and don't know whether to invite my mum.
  • (17) He is Taurus and I'm Pisces; my dad was Pisces and my mum was Taurus.
  • (18) When deformability was measured by filtration through 3-mum polycarbonate sieves, marked decreases in deformability were found in complement-coated erythrocytes.
  • (19) Short segments of portions of taenia coli of the guinea-pig averaging 54 mum X 219 mum X ca.
  • (20) Smooth muscle cells of taeniae fixed under 1 gram load were about 515 mum long.

Words possibly related to "hum"

Words possibly related to "mum"