Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Cloth in which mummies are enveloped, a fabric as to the material of which there is some dispute, but which is generally admitted to be linen.
  • noun A modern textile fabric made to some extent in imitation of the ancient fabric, and used especially as a foundation for embroidery.
  • noun A fabric resembling crape, having the warp of either cotton or silk and the weft of woolen: used for mourning when black on account of its lusterless surface. Also momie-cloth.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The ghost of a dead speculation was never so utterly damned, the eyes of a ghost of a dead speculation were never so absolutely dimmed, but that speculation of some kind might be discerned fluttering like a mummy-cloth from the shadowy outline of the former, and gleaming feebly from the gloomy goggles of the latter.

    Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 01, April 2, 1870 Various

  • An eminent cotton-spinner, who subjected four hundred specimens of mummy-cloth to the microscope, has ascertained that they were all linen; and even now, when aspiring cotton has contested its superiority, and claimed to be more healthful and more beneficial to the human frame, the choicest drapery of our tables and couches, and many of our most costly and elegant articles of dress, are fabricated from flax.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 46, August, 1861 Various

  • It would show chilling coldness not to inquire if our fair friend herself embroidered the curtains of velvet and mummy-cloth which drape her doors and windows, and if that plaque were really painted by one of the Society of Decorative Art, and not imported from Doulton.

    Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 Various

  • Mr. Piper were leaving, a formal farewell on his lips and everything straightened out to everyone's conspiratorial or generously befooled satisfaction, Ted should stagger into the room like the galvanized corpse of a Pharoah wrapped in towels instead of mummy-cloth and everything from revolver-shots to a baring of inmost heart-histories would have to be gone through with again.

    Young People's Pride Stephen Vincent Ben��t 1920

  • Yet no trace of mummy-cloth, dried skin, hair, or bitumen was ever met with in the earlier cemetery.

    El Kab James Edward Quibell 1901

  • Similar cases are frequently met with by the investigator along these lines, in which the clairvoyant is able to give the history of certain places in ancient Egypt, from the connecting link of a piece of mummy-cloth; or else to give a picture of certain events in antediluvian times, from the connecting link of a bit of fossil substance.

    Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers William Walker Atkinson 1897

  • The slopes were strewn with such stones, as well as with fragments of mummy, shreds of mummy-cloth, and human bones all whitening and withering in the sun.

    A Thousand Miles Up the Nile 1891

  • Or perhaps the explorer may find only a broken coffin, some fragments of mummy-cloth, and a handful of bones.

    Pharaohs, Fellahs and Explorers 1891

  • Here he found other objects roughly wrapped in fragments of mummy-cloth that had been torn from the body of the queen.

    Smith and the Pharaohs, and other Tales Henry Rider Haggard 1890

  • From its inner pocket and elsewhere about his person he extracted the jewels wrapped in mummy-cloth as he had found them.

    Smith and the Pharaohs, and other Tales Henry Rider Haggard 1890

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