mummy

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The dead body of a human or animal that has been embalmed and prepared for burial, as according to the practices of the ancient Egyptians.
2. n. A withered, shrunken, or well-preserved body that resembles an embalmed body.
3. n. Informal Mother.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A dead human body embalmed and dried after the manner of the ancient Egyptian preparation for burial. An immense number of mummies are found in Egypt, consisting not only of human bodies, but of those of various animals, as bulls, apes, ibises, crocodiles, fish, etc. The processes of embalming bodies were very various. The bodies of the poorer classes were merely dried with salt or natron, and wrapped up in coarse cloths. Those of the rich and the great underwent the most complicated operations, and were laboriously adorned with various ornaments. The embalmers extracted the brain through the nostrils, and the entrails through an incision in the side. The body was then shaved and washed, the belly filled with perfumes, and the whole body covered with natron, and steeped in the same material for seventy days. After this The Corpse was washed, treated with balsam or other antiseptics, and then wrapped up in linen bandages, sometimes to the number of twenty thicknesses. The body was then put into an ornamented case of wood or cartonnage. Sometimes the cases were double. The term mummy is likewise used of human bodies preserved in other ways, either by artificial preparation or by accident. The Guanches, or ancient people of the Canaries, embalmed their dead in a simple but effectual manner. In some situations the conditions of the soil and atmosphere, by the rapidity with which they permit the drying of the animal tissues, are alone sufficient for the preservation of the body with the general characteristics of a mummy. This is the case in some parts of South America, especially at Arica (formerly in Peru), where considerable numbers of bodies have been found quite dry, in pits dug in a dry saline soil. In some places natural mummies are occasionally found in caverns or in crypts, as in a well-known church-crypt in Bordeaux, France. Natural mummies of various animals are often found in such state of preservation as to allow of scientific description of many of their parts.
2. n. The substance of a mummy; a medicinal preparation supposed to consist of the substance of mummies or of dead bodies; hence, a medicinal liquor or gum in general. Also mummia. See first quotation under mummia.
3. n. In horticulture, a kind of wax used in grafting and planting trees.
4. n. A brown color prepared from the asphalt taken from Egyptian mummies, and used as an oil-color by artists. It resembles asphaltum in its general qualities, and has the advantage of being less liable to crack. It was supposed that the asphalt taken from the Egyptian mummies made the finest color. Ure, Dict., III. 361.
5. To embalm; mummify.
6. n. A mummychog.

Wiktionary

1. n. chiefly UK A child's term for mother.
2. n. An embalmed corpse wrapped in linen bandages for burial, especially as practised by the ancient Egyptians.
3. n. Any naturally preserved human or animal body.
4. n. uncountable, medicine, historical A substance used in medicine, prepared from mummified flesh.
5. n. archaic A pulp.
6. v. dated, transitive To mummify.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A dead body embalmed and dried after the manner of the ancient Egyptians; also, a body preserved, by any means, in a dry state, from the process of putrefaction.
2. n. obsolete Dried flesh of a mummy.
3. n. obsolete A gummy liquor that exudes from embalmed flesh when heated; -- formerly supposed to have magical and medicinal properties.
4. n. A brown color obtained from bitumen. See Mummy brown (below).
5. n. (Gardening) A sort of wax used in grafting, etc.
6. n. One whose affections and energies are withered.
7. v. To embalm; to mummify.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. informal terms for a mother
2. n. a body embalmed and dried and wrapped for burial (as in ancient Egypt)