Other forms: murmurs, murmured, murmuring
To murmur is to say something so quietly that the person next to you gets it and nobody else does. A mother murmuring over a cot in the dark, two people murmuring at the back of a lecture, a priest murmuring his way through a prayer.
Murmur is a noun as well, and as a noun it is rarely one voice: the murmur of a crowd, the murmur of the sea, the low murmur of traffic three streets away — a sound with no words you can pick out of it. It carries a faint whiff of things not said openly. People murmur their agreement, and they murmur against a decision they will not challenge to its face, which is where without a murmur comes from: to accept something without a murmur is to take it in silence. Doctors took the word too. A heart murmur is the extra whooshing sound a stethoscope picks up between beats — a noise, not a complaint.
1verbmurmurTo speak in a low soft voice that barely carries.~16%
“He murmured something to her and she laughed.”
2nounsoundA low, continuous, indistinct sound, especially of many voices at once.~19%
“A murmur went round the room when the result was read out.”
3nounquietA quiet complaint, made without arguing openly.~5%
“She took the extra shift without a murmur.”
4nounmedicineIn medicine, an extra sound the heart makes between beats.~60%
“The doctor heard a murmur and sent him for a scan.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 127 sentences found in the wild and placed 108 of them on a sense (19 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: mutter, whisper
MUR-mur → a MOTHer
A mother leans over the bed in the dark, one hand flat on the baby's back, saying the same soft thing again and again. The sound stops at the edge of the pillow. You feel it in your chest more than you hear it.
hooks ontomother
Latin already had murmur, and the word has come down through Old French with its letters untouched. The Latin covered more ground than ours does — humming, muttering, growling, roaring, the rush of water — and the shape of it is the whole point: one low syllable, said twice.
Latin
murmur — murmur, humming, muttering, roaring, growling, rushing etc.
Old French
murmure
Middle English
murmur
English, today
murmur
From Middle English murmur, murmor, murmour, from Old French murmure (modern French murmure), from Latin murmur (“murmur, humming, muttering, roaring, growling, rushing etc.”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA