Mute (disorder)

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Muteness is a speech disorder in which a person lacks the power of speech, or chooses not to speak.

Those who are physically mute may have problems with the parts of the Human body required for speech (The throat, vocal cords, lungs, mouth, or tongue, etc.), or if a person is born severely deaf, they will be unable to learn how to speak.

A person can be born mute, or become mute later in life as a result of accidents or exposure to certain chemicals, or even choose to become avowedly mute (Usually, but not always, for religious reasons.)

[edit] Trivia

In The Frosh Report [1], author Anthony Frosh suffers a throat disorder and describes life as a temporary mute.
In the original Planet of The Apes film, the humans the astronauts encounter are all mutes, and the astronaut played by Charlton Heston becomes a temporary mute due to being shot in the throat.
One of the characters, an angst-riddled teen called Dwayne, in the film Little Miss Sunshine is avowedly mute as a test to his will to achieve his goal to be a pilot.