Is it proper to ‘mull things?’

“Rollicking time,” sang my husband to the tune of “Mull of Kintyre.” He had been amused to hear of this misapprehension of the lyrics and smugly enjoyed it not being his mistake for a change.

That kind of mull is a Gaelic word meaning “bare headland.” I think it is related to the Welsh word for a bare hill, moel, which Gerard Manley Hopkins used, with initial mutation, as voel in “The Wreck of the Deutschland.”

That is all very well, but I have been annoyed recently by people saying that they want to mull things. I don’t mean wine, but possibilities. I would say “mull things over.” Why can’t everyone else? But the history of mull is fearfully complicated and obscure for such a little word. The Oxford English Dictionary distinguishes four main meanings for the verb and eleven for the noun, some related. Mulled wine is as obscure as any of the senses. It used to be said that mulled ale came from mould ale, meaning “ale drunk at a funeral.” Certainly a fifteenth-century dictionary gives the meaning of moldale as Potacio funerosa, but this engaging notion is now regarded as mistaken. Other theories include a derivation from mull meaning “to powder,” as spices are, or from another sense of mull, “to soften.” Some think the Dutch beer mol comes into play; some suggest an origin in Latin aqua mulsa, “honeyed water,” related to mel, “honey.”

If warm wine, a tangible thing, presents complications, it’s nothing compared to the mulling over of thoughts. In America, mulling over breakfast is to treat it desultorily. A separate meaning since the nineteenth century is “fumble a catch” or “make a mess” (a sense Trollope uses). This seems to derive from mull meaning “a muddle,” which itself may come from mullock, “rubbish.” In 1199 there is record of a man called Jordanus Mulloc, and many a Jordan Mullock today is no doubt unwitting of his last name’s import. As for mulling things over, the Dutch do it with the word meulen, and the English and Americans have also been milling things over for a hundred years or so. But I shall still add “over” mentally when I hear anyone say “mull things.”

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s March 2024 World edition.