Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A masked or costumed merrymaker, especially at a festival.
  • noun One who acts or plays in a pantomime.
  • noun An actor.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who mums, or masks himself and makes diversion in disguise; a masker; a masked buffoon; specifically, in England, one of a company of persons who go from house to house at Christmas performing a kind of play, the subject being generally St. George and the Dragon, with sundry whimsical adjuncts.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who mumms, or makes diversion in disguise; a masker; a buffon.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A person who dons a disguising costume, as for a parade or a festival.
  • noun An actor in a pantomime; one who communicates entirely through gesture and facial expression.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an actor who communicates entirely by gesture and facial expression

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French momeur, from momer, to wear a mask, pantomime.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French momeur, from momer: "to wear a mask."

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Examples

  • But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death.

    Nevermore Kelly Creagh 2010

  • Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave-cerements and corpse-like mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.

    Nevermore Kelly Creagh 2010

  • But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death.

    Nevermore Kelly Creagh 2010

  • Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave-cerements and corpse-like mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.

    Nevermore Kelly Creagh 2010

  • But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death.

    Nevermore Kelly Creagh 2010

  • Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave-cerements and corpse-like mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.

    Nevermore Kelly Creagh 2010

  • When he was not playing the libertine, he was the buffoon or mummer.

    The Stream and The Torrent 2009

  • Another senile mummer in the whitehouse setting insane foreign policy.

    Thompson: Saddam "Clearly" Had WMD And A Nuke Program 2009

  • It was just a closet dowel rod painted white, with battery-powered LED Christmas lights wrapped around it - at the top I put some ragged pieces of cloth like the Medieval mummer plays we did in England when I was a kid.

    you did NOT just give me raisins 2009

  • It was just a closet dowel rod painted white, with battery-powered LED Christmas lights wrapped around it - at the top I put some ragged pieces of cloth like the Medieval mummer plays we did in England when I was a kid.

    a patient etherised upon a table 2009

Comments

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  • Citation on stroboscopically.

    June 22, 2008

  • Do you think this is as in 'keep mum'?

    June 22, 2008

  • Here's how I think of this.

    June 24, 2008

  • I wonder if mumble is related.

    June 24, 2008

  • r - Thanks a lot -- now I want a cheesesteak and I just had a salad for lunch! ;-)

    June 24, 2008

  • Would a soft pretzel tide you over, dontcry?

    June 25, 2008

  • With yellow mustard?

    June 25, 2008

  • Naturally.

    June 25, 2008