The mumpokers broke out in this chant: “The word is Mum! The word is Mum! If you babble as such We'll poke yer bum! If you yabble too much Your rear'll be numb!

Military records describing the deaths of men as a result of injuries sustained during combat employed the phrase in a (now near-obsolete) sense to describe a man on the verge of dying: […] 'He was in extremis when seen and died about 2 hours after the action ceased at 9 pm'.

[A] wild wave in the wild North-sea, / […] overbears the bark, / And him that helms it, […]

1955, Graham J. Brealey and Michael Kasha, The Rôle of Hydrogen Bonding in the n → π* Blue-shift Phenomenon, in Journal of the American Chemical Society, volume 77, issue 17, 4462–4468.