mug
Americannoun
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mugs
plural
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a drinking cup, usually cylindrical in shape, having a handle, and often of a heavy substance, as earthenware.
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the quantity it holds.
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Slang.
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the face.
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the mouth.
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an exaggerated facial expression; grimace, as in acting.
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a thug, ruffian, or other criminal.
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British Slang. a gullible person; dupe; fool.
verb (used with object)
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mugs,
present (3rd person singular)
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mugged,
past participle, past
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mugging
present participle
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to assault or menace, especially with the intention of robbery.
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Slang. to photograph (a person), especially in compliance with an official or legal requirement.
verb (used without object)
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mugs,
present (3rd person singular)
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mugged,
past participle, past
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mugging
present participle
noun
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slang a person's face or mouth
get your ugly mug out of here!
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slang a grimace
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slang a gullible person, esp one who is swindled easily
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a worthless activity
verb
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informal (tr) to attack or rob (someone) violently
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slang (intr) to pull faces or overact, esp in front of a camera
noun
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a drinking vessel with a handle, usually cylindrical and made of earthenware
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Also called: mugful. the quantity held by a mug or its contents
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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mugsimple
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mugssimple
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have muggedperfect
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has muggedperfect
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am muggingprogressive
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are muggingprogressive
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is muggingprogressive
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have been muggingperfect progressive
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has been muggingperfect progressive
Past
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muggedsimple
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had muggedperfect
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was muggingprogressive
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were muggingprogressive
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had been muggingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of mug
First recorded in 1560–70; probably from Scandinavian; compare Swedish mugg, Norwegian, Danish mugge “drinking cup”; sense “face” apparently transferred from cups adorned with grotesque faces; sense “to assault” from earlier pugilistic slang “to strike in the face, fight”
Explanation
Mug is a funny word that could represent a cup, your face, or even what you do when you rob someone. And, if you mug someone for their mug, you may end up getting a mug shot taken of your guilty face. Confusing? Read on. A mug is an informal vessel for drinking coffee or tea, as opposed to a china tea cup or a demitasse espresso cup, for example. Informally, a mug is a face: that's why a mug shot of a prisoner is a picture of his face right after he has been arrested. When it's a verb, mug means "rob someone while threatening violence." This meaning came from an earlier definition, "to strike someone in the face (or the mug)."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“When someone has been arrested, you’re generally catching them at a pretty low point,” Weld said, adding that there is no need for the “public shame and embarrassment” of posting their mug shot.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 2, 2026
A ban remains on websites charging people a fee to remove mug shots.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 2, 2026
Since 2023, law-enforcement agencies in West Virginia typically can’t post to social media mug shots of people charged with minor offenses.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 2, 2026
She said she won’t drive 45 minutes to Raleigh for mug shots after the portal goes offline, meaning some stories she posts about the county probably won’t have photos.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 2, 2026
Meadowlark busies herself next to me, squeezing lemon and dunking her tea bag in and out of the mug of hot water.
From "The Wrong Way Home" by Kate O’Shaughnessy
It’s a passionate defense of cheesy souvenirs based on all of your responses to my post about collecting Starbucks mugs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 26, 2026
Le Creuset seemed to be a favourite of the former SNP chief executive, with £289 worth of mugs located during the search.
From BBC ● Jun. 23, 2026
“We’re selling these five, and people can take the copyright and put them on coffee mugs, or make an AI movie, or whatever they want to do with them,” O’Meara said, laughing.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2026
Others have posted videos and photos on social media of themselves breaking Starbucks mugs.
From Barron's ● May 26, 2026
Other roots lowered to a small cupboard and grabbed a couple of mugs made from hollowed acorns the size of apples.
From "The Way to Rio Luna" by Zoraida Cordova
The pervasive threat is a constant topic of conversation in a way that crime was when I was growing up: who had been mugged, whose apartment had been robbed, whose car had been stolen.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 20, 2026
Also: What kind of dingus gets mugged on Fifth Avenue?
From Salon ● Mar. 23, 2026
Ultrapure-water projects are big, one-off beasts that everybody and his brother wants to build, so even the smart operators can watch their margins get mugged the minute capital spending gets a head cold.
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 9, 2025
Bovino mostly mugged for the cameras, like the time he oversaw an invasion of an emptied MacArthur Park in July with the National Guard parked on Wilshire Boulevard.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 9, 2025
I told him I’d gotten mugged in Peshawar.
From "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini
After that earlier Warner mugging, I wrote about the “legalized economic vandalism that antitrust has become.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 16, 2025
“It is funny that the heaviest of all awards is given by actors — ’us what we do, it means so much,’” he said, mugging ponderous emotion.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 24, 2025
In a statement, Haigh said she told police she had lost her phone during a mugging on a night out in 2013 but later found it had not been taken.
From BBC ● Nov. 28, 2024
When he isn’t mugging for Reed’s camera he vacillates between a stony-faced refusal to admit guilt and an approximation of remorse.
From Salon ● Mar. 26, 2024
He presses one shoulder into the wall, crosses his arms, cocks his head, squints his eyes, mugging James Dean better than James Dean.
From "I'll Give You the Sun" by Jandy Nelson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
