mute

adj

1. Not having the power of speech; dumb.

   “Thus, while the mute Creation downward bend / Their sight, and to their Earthy Mother tend, / Man looks aloft; and with erected Eyes / Beholds his own hereditary Skies. / From ſuch rude Principles our Form began; / And Earth was Metamorphos'd into Man.”

2. Silent; not making a sound.

   “He ask’d, but all the Heav’nly Quire ſtood mute, / And ſilence was in Heav’n: […]”

   “[…] The heathens have broken into Thy Temple, and Thou art silent! Esau mocks Thy Children, and Thou remainest mute! Show thyself, arise, and let Thy Voice resound, Thou mutest among all the mute!”

3. Not uttered; unpronounced; silent; also, produced by complete closure of the mouth organs which interrupt the passage of breath; said of certain letters.
4. Not giving a ringing sound when struck; said of a metal.

noun

1. (obsolete)A stopped consonant; a stop.
2. (obsolete)An actor who does not speak; a mime performer.

   “As for the poor honest Maid, whom all the Story is built upon, and who ought to be one of the principal Actors in the Play, she is commonly a Mute in it:”

3. A person who does not have the power of speech.

   “The girl left, and presently returned, followed by two male mutes, to whom the Queen made another sign.”

4. A hired mourner at a funeral; an undertaker's assistant.

   “He asked about the undertaking business, and how many mutes went down with Lady Estrich’s remains […]”

   “The little box was eventually carried in one hand by the leading mute, while his colleague, with a finger placed on the lid, to prevent it from swaying, walked to one side and a little to the rear.”

   “Then followed a long silence during which the mute turned to them and said, ‘Of course you'll be wanting an urn, sir?’”

5. An object for dulling the sound of an instrument, especially a brass instrument, or damper for pianoforte; a sordine.
6. An electronic switch or control that mutes the sound.

   “Another related primary control is called a mute, which is simply a switch that kills the signal altogether, allowing for a speedier turn-off than turning the fader all the way down rapidly. Mutes are probably more commonly used during multitrack music recording than during film mixing because in music all tracks are on practically all of the time, whereas workstations produce silence when there is no desired signal […]”

7. A mute swan.

   “The trumpeters' fate seems likely to get tangled with that of the mute swan. Currently there's enough habitat for both species, but that may change if trumpeters flourish and mutes aren't controlled. Right now mutes are thriving.”

8. (Internet)An action of muting, especially in a discussion forum as a penalty for breaking rules.
9. The faeces of a hawk or falcon.

   “On which was written not in words, But hieroglyphic mute of birds”

   “The Wart was familiar with the nests of Spar-hawk and Gos, the crazy conglomerations of sticks and oddments which had been taken over from squirrels or crows, and he knew how the twigs and the tree foot were splashed with white mutes, old bones, muddy feathers and castings.”

verb

1. (transitive)To silence, to make quiet.
2. (transitive)To turn off the sound of.

   “Please mute the music while I make a call.”

3. (archaic)Of a bird: to defecate.

   “I Mute as a hauke dothe whan ſhe hath endued her gorge.”

   “And I knewe not that there were Sparrowes in the wall, and mine eyes being open, the Sparrowes muted warme doung into mine eyes, […]”

   “The Birds were large, fine, and neat accordingly; looking as like the Men in my Country, as one Pea do's like another; for they eat and drank like Men, muted like Men, endued or digested like Men, farted like Men, but stunk like Devils, […]”

   “All the pigeons, to the number of thirty-five, flew to and fro over the men's heads and muted upon them from mid-air; […]”

4. (transitive)To cast off; to moult.

   “Have I muted all my feathers?”