#mumpsimus

An example of mumpsimus: a person who stubbornly sticks to saying they’re straight despite everything they do proving that they are not.

Mumpsimus

MUMP-simmus

MEANING: someone who sticks to their position despite clear evidence that they're wrong

This word for someone who is stubbonly incorrect first emerged in the 16th century.

The story goes - according to Erasmus - that an English priest was once giving Mass when he incorrectly recited the Latin "quod ore sumpsimus" as "quod ore mumpsimus".

When told of his error, the priest obstinately insisted that his reading was correct, declaring: "I will not change my old mumpsimus for your new sumpsimus!"

And so "mumpsimus" caught on as a way to describe someone who similarly refuses to give an inch when faced with evidence of their own wrongness.

Mumpsimus - someone who perversely sticks to their old ways even when they are wrong #logophilia #obscurewords #lostwords

Some people take a perverse delight in sticking to their old ways even when they have been demonstrably proven to have been incorrect. Such a person might be described as a mumpsimus. According to a story told by Richard Pace, later to become the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, a monk was challenged in 1517 for mangling the phrase “quod in ore sumpsimus” in the Latin version of the Eucharist as…

The idea that "a woman's place is in the home" is a mumpsimus.

You still think they put microchips in the COVID vaccines? You're such a mumpsimus!

"Gender is what's in your pants" is also a mumpsimus.

Can you believe people are still going around wearing MAGA hats, even after Trump's lost all those court cases? They're all mumpsimuses!

What with climate change, and all, I've had to give up the idea that heating my home with a wood-burning stove is "Going Green." It was hard, but I don't want to be a mumpsimus.

You know, the other day, I was talking with a woman who casually mentioned wondering what Moon Cheese tastes like. I pulled up a astronomy article on my phone about moon rocks, but even after I read it to her, she insisted the moon was made of cheese, because her mom told her that, once. SMH

Interview with Matthew Cheney!

Matthew Cheney interviewed me for his blog The Mumpsimus, where we discussed queer horror, Jean Genet and Joe Orton….. Check it out here!