Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Mummy |
MummyNoun1. Informal terms for a mother. 2. A body embalmed and dried and wrapped for burial (as in ancient Egypt). Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "mummy" was first used: 1392. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Satire | MUMMY, n. An ancient Egyptian, formerly in universal use among modern civilized nations as medicine, and now engaged in supplying art with an excellent pigment. He is handy, too, in museums in gratifying the vulgar curiosity that serves to distinguish man from the lower animals. By means of the Mummy, mankind, it is said, Attests to the gods its respect for the dead. We plunder his tomb, be he sinner or saint, Distil him for physic and grind him for paint, Exhibit for money his poor, shrunken frame, And with levity flock to the scene of the shame. O, tell me, ye gods, for the use of my rhyme: For respecting the dead what's the limit of time? Scopas Brune. Source: Devil's Dictionary. |
History & Folklore | A body of a human being or other animal embalmed or treated for burial with preservatives. Source: European Union. (references) |
Literature | Mummy is the Egyptian word mum, wax; from the custom of anointing the body with wax and wrapping it in cerecloth. (Persian, momia, wax; Italian, mummia; French, momie.) (See Beaten .). Source: Brewer's Dictionary. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
A mummy is a preserved corpse. The best-known mummies are those that have been embalmed with the specific purpose of preservation, particularly in ancient Egypt. Mummies are also known to have formed naturally due to environmental conditions, such as extreme cold (Ötzi the Iceman), acid (Tollund Man), or desiccating dryness.The term is thought to be derived from the Arabic word mumiyah, meaning bitumen; bitumen was once thought to be used extensively in ancient Egyptian embalming procedures due to the blackened skin of unwrapped mummies, though this is now in doubt. Another possible source for the name is the Egyptian Coptic word mum, for wax; unlike bitumen beeswax really is extensively used in Egyptian embalming.
The history of mummies
The earliest 'mummified' individual dates back to approx 3300 BC, although it is not a 'true' mummy. The body is on display in the British Museum and has been given the nickname of 'Ginger' because he has red hair. Ginger was buried in the hot desert sand with maybe some stones piled on top to prevent the corpse being eaten by jackals. The hot, dry conditions desiccated the body, preventing the muscle and soft tissues from decaying. Ginger was buried with some pottery vessels, which would have held food and drink to sustain him on his long journey to the other world. There are no written records of the religion or gods from that time, and it is not known if it was the intention of the ancient Egyptians that the deceased were being preserved. By the time of the first dynasty, the ancient Egyptians were definitely aware of what they were trying to achieve.The Egyptians also expanded the practice of mummification to animals. Sacred animals central to cults, such as ibis, hawks, and cats, were mummified by the thousands.
Preservation techniques were also used by other cultures around the world, such as the Scythians and Pazyryks.
Mummies in the modern world
Mummies have been an object of intense interest in the West since archaeologists began finding them in large numbers. 19th century aristocrats would often entertain themselves by buying mummies, having them unwrapped, and holding observation sessions. Mummies were also believed to have medicinal properties, and were sold as pharmaceuticals in powdered form. However, they were not used fuel for steam locomotives, and the idea that they were came from a joke by Mark Twain. During the First World War, mummy wrapping linens were manufactured into paper.During the 20th century, horror films and other mass media popularized the notion of a curse associated with mummies. This more or less facetious belief probably stems in part from the supposed curse on the tomb of Tutankhamun.
Science has also taken notice of mummies. Dr. Bob Brier, an Egyptologist, has been the first modern scientist to successfully recreate a mummy using the Egyptian method. Mummies have been used in medicine, to calibrate CAT scan machines at levels of radiation that would be too dangerous for use on living people.
Several Egyptian mummies are exhibited at the Egyptian Museums in Cairo and Berlin, the latter containing the head of Nofretete.
Related topics
Mummy is also a colloquial name to refer to a mother.
- Embalming
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Mummy."
Synonyms: MummySynonyms: ma (n), mama (n), mamma (n), mammy (n), mater (n), mom (n), momma (n), mommy (n), mum (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Corpse | Noun: corpse, corse, carcass, cadaver, bones, skeleton, dry bones; defunct, relics, reliquiae, remains, mortal remains, dust, ashes, earth, clay; mummy; carrion; food for worms, food for fishes; tenement of clay this mortal coil. |
Dryness | Adjective: dry, anhydrous, arid; adust, arescent; dried. Verb: undamped; juiceless, sapless; sear; husky; rainless, without rain, fine; dry as a bone, dry as dust, dry as a stick, dry as a mummy, dry as a biscuit. |
Punishment | Strike; deal a blow to, administer the lash, smite; slap, slap the face; smack, cuff, box the ears, spank, thwack, thump, beat, lay on, swinge, buffet; thresh, thrash, pummel, drub, leather, trounce, sandbag, baste, belabor; lace, lace one's jacket; dress, dress down, give a dressing, trim, warm, wipe, tund, cob, bang, strap, comb, lash, lick, larrup, wallop, whop, flog, scourge, whip, birch, cane, give the stick, switch, flagellate, horsewhip, bastinado, towel, rub down with an oaken towel, rib roast, dust one's jacket, fustigate, pitch into, lay about one, beat black and blue; beat to a mummy, beat to a jelly; give a black eye. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Mummy |
| English words defined with "mummy": edmontosaurus ♦ Mummied, Mummies, mummification, Mummified, Mummiform, mummify, Mummy wheat, Mummying ♦ Scelet. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "mummy": Beaten to a Mummy ♦ CLEOPATRA ♦ PHARAOH, Pharaoh's daughters. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Mummy" is also a word in the following language with the English translation in parentheses. Frisian (mummy). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | I mean, I'm a doctor and you're a 5000-year-old mummy I brought back to life (The Simpsons; writing credit: Artur Brauner; Paul Hengge) Why don't you stop being a mummy for a few minutes and come to life (Topper; writing credit: Eric Hatch; Jack Jevne) Mummy. She always did like Richard best (Robin Hood; writing credit: Ken Anderson; Larry Clemmons) For the third timeBoris Karloff as 'The Mummy.' (Porky's II: The Next Day; writing credit: Roger Swaybill; Alan Ormsby) You better think of something fast, because, if he turns me into a mummy your the first one I'm coming after (The Mummy; writing credit: Stephen Sommers; Lloyd Fonvielle) | |
Tongue Twisters | Peggy Bobcock's mummy. (references; author: unknown) | |
Movie/TV Titles | The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackal (1969) I Want My Mummy (1966) Attack of the Mayan Mummy (1964) Mummy Daddy (1963) I Was a Teenage Mummy (1962) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books | |||
Theater & Movies | |||
Music |
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High Tech |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Title | Author | Quote |
Les Miserables | Hugo, Victor | It was a mummy world |
Grapes of Wrath | Steinbeck, John | On a newspaper lay a blue shriveled little mummy. |
Walden | Thoreau, Henry David | Nevertheless, we will not forget that some Egyptian wheat was handed down to us by a mummy. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | Kidney stones, one of the most painful of the urologic disorders, are not a product of modern life. Scientists have found evidence of kidney stones in a 7,000-year-old Egyptian mummy. (references) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Mummy" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 84.74% of the time. "Mummy" is used about 2,396 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 84.74% | 2,031 | 4,254 |
| Noun (proper) | 15.26% | 366 | 14,782 |
| Total | 100.00% | 2,396 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "mummy": dry as a mummy ♦ mummy brown ♦ mummy wheat ♦ To beat to a mummy. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "mummy": mummy-beads, mummy-brown, mummy-cases, Mummy-in-law, mummy-shaped. | |
Ending with "mummy": m-m-mummy. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day | Expression | Frequency per Day |
mummy | 1,647 | mummy maze game | 31 |
the mummy | 618 | mummy alive | 25 |
return of the mummy | 461 | the mummy return picture | 24 |
mummy maze | 430 | the mummy 2 | 23 |
mummy mystery | 189 | bog mummy | 22 |
bbs mummy | 177 | mummy nefertiti queen | 22 |
egyptian mummy | 153 | egyptian mummy picture | 22 |
mummy mystery through walk | 135 | mummy nefertitis | 21 |
the mummy picture | 129 | mummy photo | 21 |
mummy nefertiti | 99 | holmes mummy mystery sherlock | 19 |
the mummy movie | 96 | mummy sleeping bag | 18 |
the cast of the mummy | 62 | mummy bag | 18 |
3 mummy | 55 | mummy pic | 18 |
yummy mummy | 51 | cheat mummy ps2 return | 17 |
cheat mummy mystery | 48 | ancient egypt mummy | 17 |
egypt mummy | 47 | board mummy | 17 |
the mummy game | 40 | holmes mummy mystery sherlock through walk | 17 |
cheat mummy return | 36 | the mummy book | 16 |
hint mummy mystery | 33 | deluxe maze mummy | 16 |
cast mummy return | 31 | fan fiction mummy | 15 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Language | Translations for "mummy"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | mumje (zombie), pastë e butë (mum). (various references) | |
Arabic | مومياء, ماما (mama, mum), حنط (embalm), الأم, أم (mama, mammy, mother, mum, or). (various references) | |
Bulgarian | слаб и сух човек, тъмнокафяв пигмент, мумия, мама (mama, mamma, mammy, mom, mother, mum), безформена маса (pulp). (various references) | |
Chinese | 木乃伊 . (various references) | |
Czech | mumifikovat, mumie, máma. (various references) | |
Danish | mumie. (various references) | |
Dutch | mummie. (various references) | |
Esperanto | mumio. (various references) | |
Farsi | مومیا, جسدمومیاشده . (various references) | |
Finnish | muumio. (various references) | |
French | momie. (various references) | |
Frisian | mummy. (various references) | |
German | Mumie, mutti (ma, mama, mamma, mom, momma, mommy, mommyUS, mum), mama (Ma, mam, mama, mamma, mammy, mom, momma, mommy, mommyUS, mum). (various references) | |
Greek | μούμια, μαμά (mama, mammy, mum). (various references) | |
Hebrew | אמא'ל", אמא (mama, mamma, mammy, mom, mother), אימא, ח וט (embalmed). (various references) | |
Hungarian | múmia (anatomy), mami, anyu (Ma, mam, mammy, mom, mommy, mum). (various references) | |
Indonesian | mumi, ibu (mom, mommy, mother). (various references) | |
Italian | mummia, mamma (Ma, mama, mamma, mom, Momma, mother, Mum). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 木乃伊 . (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | みいら. (various references) | |
Korean | 미라 (Mum, Mummies). (various references) | |
Manx | shirgane. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | ummymay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | massa (aggregate, bawbee, cob, dough, gross, havings, lump, mass, massiness, pad, paste, squash), múmia, polpa (marrow, pap, squash), nuímia, cadáver dissecado. (various references) | |
Romanian | mumifica (mummify), mumie, mãmicuţã (mum), mãmicã (Ma, mamma, mum). (various references) | |
Russian | мумия. (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | mumija. (various references) | |
Spanish | momia. (various references) | |
Swedish | mumie, mamma (ma, mam, mama, mamma, mammy, mom, mommy, mother, mum). (various references) | |
Thai | แม่ (mammy, momma, mommy, mother, mum), มัมมี่. (various references) | |
Turkish | mumya, anne (Ma, mam, mama, mamma, mammy, mater, maternal, maw, mom, mother, mum, old lady, old woman). (various references) | |
Ukrainian | мумія (anatomy), мама (mama, mamma, mammy, mom, mother, mum). (various references) | |
Vietnamese | nuây, hòm ướp xác (mummy-case), bao ướp xác (mummy-case). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Arabic | 500-Modern | mumiyah. (various references) |
| Persian | 800-Modern | mumiya. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "mummy": mummying. (additional references) | |
| |
"Mummy" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Lummy, Mammi, Mgumia, mimmi, mmm, momie, mommie, momy, mormy, mumf, mumi, mumiya, mummie, Mummm, Mummmy, mumms, mummys, mumsy, mumu, mumy, Munni, munny, pummy, ummm, ummmm, ummmmm, Umy. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "mummy" (pronounced mu"mē) |
| 3 | -u" m ē | chummy, crummy, dummy, gummy, rummy, tummy, yummy. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "m-m-m-u-y" | |
-1 letter: mumm. | |
-2 letters: mum, umm, yum. | |
-3 letters: mm, mu, my, um. | |
| Words containing the letters "m-m-m-u-y" | |
+2 letters: mummery, mummify. | |
+3 letters: mummying. | |
+5 letters: mummifying. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Slideshow 7. Quotations: Fiction 8. Quotations: Non-fiction | 9. Usage Frequency 10. Expressions 11. Expressions: Internet 12. Translations: Modern | 13. Translations: Ancient 14. Derivations 15. Rhymes 16. Anagrams | 17. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
