MULL  . (1) A soft

plain muslin exported largely from England to India, &c., and used also in some qualities for summer dresses in the home trade . The name is an abbreviation of the Hindu mulmul . (2) A word, derived from the same root as seen in " meal " and " mill," meaning that which is ground or reduced in other ways to powder or small particles . Thus a snuff-box is in Scotland called a " mull," from the early machines in which the tobacco was gro and . Large snuff-mulls, which remained stationary on a table, as opposed to the small portable boxes, often took the form of a ram's head ornamented in silver . Possibly from the ground or grated spices with whicn ale or wine is flavoured when heated, comes the expression " mulled," as applied to such a beverage . The colloquial expression " to make a mull," i.e. to muddle or make a failure of something, also perhaps connected with " to mull," to reduce to powder . (3) The Scots word " mull," meaning a promontory or headland, as the Mull of Galloway, the Mull of Kintyre, represents the Gaelic maol, cf . Icelandic muli in the same sense; this may be the same as mini, snout, cf . Ger . Maul .