The word mus refers to an invitational card game comprising four independent casts in which discarding is possible if all players agree.
This game is played with Spanish cards and generally involves four players forming two pairs. Each player has four cards and bets so many for four moves: the big one, the small one, the pairs and the game. The pair that reaches 40 points wins a game and the game is won by the pair that wins two out of three.
SYNONYMS FOR Mus
- Card game
- Spanish deck of cards
- Playing cards
ORIGIN OF Mus
This word comes from the Basque “mus” and in turn from the French “mouche” which means fly. The word is attributed to a card game with more than two hundred years of history and its most widely accepted origin is the Basque Country.
It is also believed that “mus” has its origin in Basque, where musu means kiss, a gesture that serves as a sign to indicate the best possible play (3 kings and an ace). Another theory states that this word comes from Latin, where muss means “to keep quiet”.
The conjugation of the verb musso in the first person singular would be mus which would mean “I keep quiet”, as opposed to “to speak”, which would represent the beginning of the betting rounds and the game itself.
CURIOSITIES OF Mus
As a curious fact also the word mus is a term used in turn by the players of the card game mus before starting the invite to indicate that they want a change of cards, as well as “no mus” or “give mus”. So it is used both for the name of the game and as a “canto” or invite instruction of the game.