Ok. that's a bad pun. A bad joke, I admit.
But if you go through the cruel jokes that subs inflict on us when it comes to phrasal verbs, you are sooner or later going to lose all your sense of humour, and sense of grammar as well.
Just as well.
It is now quite fashionable to use mull whenever you can. I am not going to mull the usage of this word, because it cannot be done. I mean, you just can't mull something as you cull dogs these days.
The thing is mull as a verb in itself does not stand, the phrasal verb is to mull over. To mull over something means to spend time thinking carefully about a plan or a proposal.
Here's a Press Trust of India (PTI) creed reproduced faithfully by CNN-IBN (Govt mulling increasing no of SC judges; March 24, 2007):
Centre was mulling increasing the number of judges of the Supreme Court in view of backlog of cases, said Union Law Minister H R Bhardwaj on Saturday.
The Hindu showed the correct usage (Mittal: it's just speculation; March 25, 2007):
The Korea Economic Daily on March 16 reported that Arcelor-Mittal was mulling over a hostile takeover of Pohang Steel Company (Posco) and a message about its interest was conveyed to the Korean major last month.
But, the Daily News & Analysis did not (@Kolkata: BPOs log on to eastern India; March 23, 2007):
Infosys BPO and Satyam are mulling an entry into the eastern metro by the end of the current calendar year. Firstsource will open its second centre in Kolkata this year, while HSBC’s BPO arm already has a base in the eastern Indian city.
I didn't know it was so easy to get it over. And done with.
