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mosh

/mɑʃ/verb, noun

mosh is a verb meaning “To dance by intentionally jumping into and colliding with other, similarly behaving dancers, and performing other wild or aggressive movements” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled M-O-S-H and has one syllable, and it appears about once in every 2 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does mosh mean?

verb

  1. 1

    To dance by intentionally jumping into and colliding with other, similarly behaving dancers, and performing other wild or aggressive movements.

  2. 2

    rareTo intentionally jump into and collide with (another dancer) at a concert.

noun

  1. 1

    The moshing style of dancing.

    We had a great mosh at the gig.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce mosh?

  • UK /mɒʃ/
  • US /mɑʃ/

Mosh has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-mosh.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of mosh

  • moshes present, singular, he/she/it, plural
  • moshing participle, present
  • moshed participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is mosh?

Mosh appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 43,663rd most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Mosh in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchpogoter (wild, jumping dancing)
GermanPogo tanzen (wild, jumping dancing), jemanden antanzen (jump and collide with other dancer)
Portuguesemoshar (wild, jumping dancing)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does mosh come from?

Possibly an alteration or deformation of mash.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).