Mogul
name, noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Alternative spelling of Moghul. alt-of, alternative
- 2 A rich or powerful person; a magnate, nabob.
"a Silicon Valley tech mogul"
- 3 A hump or bump on a skiing piste.
"On the same slope, choose a steeper traverse track on a short mogul field that passes over a series of small moguls, and repeat the avalement movements."
- 4 a very wealthy or powerful businessperson wordnet
- 5 A steam locomotive of the 2-6-0 wheel arrangement.
"On that August Thursday afternoon, there was little freight traffic; a large "K3" Mogul went down with a short, fast goods, and a W.D. 2-8-0 proceeded northward light. […] We saw a few Gresley Moguls on goods, as a limited amount of freight traffic was sandwiched in even on this busy day."
Show 4 more definitions
- 6 A larger-sized (39 mm diameter) screw base used for large, high-power light bulbs, known as mogul (screw) base light bulbs.
- 7 a member of the Muslim dynasty that ruled India until 1857 wordnet
- 8 A machine that forms shaped candies from syrups or gels.
- 9 a bump on a ski slope wordnet
- 1 To ski over a course of humps or bumps.
- 1 A census-designated place in Washoe County, Nevada, United States.
Example
More examples"Business mogul Sam Matekane's upstart political party, the Revolution for Prosperity, won 56 of the 120 constituencies in general elections but fell short of his goal of winning an outright 61-seat majority."
Etymology
Figurative use of Moghul, which originally meant Mongol, or person of Mongolian descent. In this context, it refers to the Mughal Empire (Mughal being Persian or Arabic for "Mongol") of the Indian subcontinent that existed between 1526 and 1857: the early Mughal emperors claimed a heritage dating back to the Mongol ruler Genghis Khan. The modern meaning of the word is supposedly derived from the storied riches of the Mughal emperors, which, for example, produced the Taj Mahal.
From dialectal German Mugel or from dialectal Norwegian mugje (“heap, mound”).
Related phrases
More for "mogul"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.