mope

Of North Germanic origin, related to Swedish mopa (“to sulk”), Danish måbe. Compare also German muffen, French moue.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /məʊp/

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• (General American) IPA^(key): /moʊp/
• Rhymes: -əʊp

mope (third-person singular simple present mopes, present participle moping, simple past and past participle moped)

1. (intransitive) To carry oneself in a depressed, lackadaisical manner; to give oneself up to low spirits; to pout, sulk.
2. (transitive) To make spiritless and stupid.

• moper
• mopery
• mopey

mope (plural mopes)

1. The act of moping

   When she gets upset, she has a little mope, and then gets over it.

2. (archaic) A dull, spiritless person.
   • 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC:

     putting gulleries on some or other till they have made by their humouring or gulling ex stulto insanum, a mope or a noddy

   Synonym: mopus

3. (pornography industry) A bottom feeder who "mopes" around a pornography studio hoping for his big break and often does bit parts in exchange for room and board and meager pay.
   • 2011: LA Weekly, documenting uses dating to the 1990s

     The porn industry is many things. Subtle is not one of them. So when Porn Inc. went searching for a job title for people like Stephen Hill, the choice was "mope." It's based on the off-camera life of these fringe actors, hangers-on who mope around the studios hoping for a bit role, which if they're lucky might bring them $50 plus food — and the chance to have sex with a real, live woman.

• poem, pome, poëm

Cognate with English mope.

mope

1. fool, astonished

• Jacob Poole (1867), William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, page 57