mummy

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈmʌm.i/^[1]

Etymology

inherited from Middle English mummie,^[2][3][1] borrowed from Anglo-Norman mumie,^[3][1] from Medieval Latin mumia,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from Arabic مُومِيَاء (mūmiyāʾ, “embalmed body; bitumen”),^{[2][3][6][4][5]} from Persian موم (mūm, “wax”).^{[2][3][6][4][5]} Barnhart and Etymonline give the Persian intermediate mūmiyā “asphalt”.^[4][5] The children's word mummy “mother” is a separate word, an alteration of mammy.^[2][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Not a body but a medicine: in late Middle English mummie was a drug prepared from the flesh of embalmed corpses.^{[2][3][4][5][7]} Barnhart dates it to 1392; the OED's first quotation is from about 1400.^[4][7]

Semantic evolution

The sense grew out of an old belief that Egyptian mummies had been embalmed with asphalt, which was used as a medicine in the Middle Ages.^[5] Ancient bodies were dug up for the asphalt they were thought to contain, and later merchants embalmed the bodies of executed criminals and others to keep up the supply.^[5] The meaning “embalmed body of ancient Egypt” is recorded only from the 1610s,^[5][4][3] and the powdered remains were also sold as a brown paint pigment until the early 20th century.^[5][7][1] Because the drug was pulpy, beat to a mummy meant “beat to a pulp” (1601).^[7] The mummy who walks again belongs to 20th-century horror films.^[1]

Timeline

• 1392 – “medicine made from embalmed bodies”.^[4]
• 1601 – “pulpy mass”, in beat to a mummy.^[7]
• 1615 – “embalmed body”.^[4][3]
• 1620 – verb, “to mummify”.^[7]
• 1854 – a brown bituminous pigment.^[7]
• 20th century – the reanimated mummy of horror films.^[1]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A dead body embalmed and prepared for burial, especially in the manner of the ancient Egyptians.
2. A body that has been naturally dried and preserved.
3. A withered or shrunken person.
4. (historical) A medicine prepared from the remains of embalmed bodies.

Verb

1. To mummify.

Word family

• mummify
• unmummied
• mummy bag

Related words

• bitumen
• sarcophagus

References

1. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
3. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
5. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. [1] [2] [3] Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1999), 2nd ed., New York: Random House
7. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press