mummer
nounEtymology
From Middle English mummer, mommer, equivalent to mum + -er, perhaps conflating with Old French momeor (“jester, entertainer”), from mommer (“to wear a mask”), from momon (“mask”). Compare German Mumme (“mask”), 16th Century German mummen (“to disguise oneself”), Middle Dutch mommen, mummen (“to go about in a mask, to disguise”), Middle Low Saxon mommen (“to wear a mask, to disguise”), Dutch mom (“mask”) and mimmen (“to mask”) as well as Spanish momo (“grimace”). Perhaps both of the conflated terms are from the same ultimate root, as note Middle Low Saxon mummen (“to speak indistinctly, to disguise oneself”), Dutch mommen (“to speak indistinctly”), German mummen (“to speak indistinctly”), English mump (“to grimace, mumble”).
- inherited from mummer
Definitions
A person who dons a disguising costume, as for a parade or a festival.
An actor in a pantomime
An actor in a pantomime; one who communicates entirely through gesture and facial expression.
- [To] perform as mummers, who act in relays of eight, at the worship of ancestors.
Synonym of mum (“to act in pantomime or dumb show”).
- There is a general agreement that niggering [blackface performance] took over from mummering to keep up the old custom.
- We mummered taverns and restaurants and the airport (the dead man went round and round on the luggage carousel). We mummered Portuguese fishing trawlers in the harbour, where the show worked despite the language barrier, […]
The neighborhood
Derived
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for mummer. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA