mogul [L16th] If you are a skier you are probably familiar with the mogul [M20th], the hump or bump that disrupts your progress. This has nothing to do with the movie mogul. The skier’s mogul comes from Austrian German Mugel ‘hillock’. The media mogul is a use of Mogul, a member of the Muslim dynasty of Mongolian origin, which ruled much of India from the 16th to the 19th centuries. This historical term is now more usually spelled Mughal. It is originally from Persian mugul ‘Mongol’.