Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Plural form of
mummer .
Etymologies
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Examples
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She heard the bell at the theatre calling the mummers to the performance, and she saw, passing opposite, men with white faces and women in faded gowns going in at the stage-door.
Madame Bovary 2003
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He spends all his time in palaces; he will want to come home to a house which feels like a home and not a great cathedral filled by a band of mummers, which is what the royal palaces are like.
The Virgin's Lover Philippa Gregory 1996
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He spends all his time in palaces; he will want to come home to a house which feels like a home and not a great cathedral filled by a band of mummers, which is what the royal palaces are like.
The Virgin's Lover Philippa Gregory 1996
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She heard the bell at the theatre calling the mummers to the performance, and she saw, passing opposite, men with white faces and women in faded gowns going in at the stage-door.
Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1850
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The mummers is a year long tradition that generates over nine million dollars for the local economy.
NPR Topics: News 2009
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The influence of indignation upon the voice caused me to reflect that we might devise a mechanical means of inflaming some in that constellation of mummers which is the heritage of the Anglo-Saxon race.
Men, Women, and Boats Stephen Crane 1885
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To-day in the temples of India, or among the lamas of Thibet, the priests dance the demons out, or the new year in, arrayed in animal masks (Ibid., p. 297); and the "mummers" at Yule-tide, in England, are a survival of the same custom.
Atlantis : the antediluvian world Ignatius Donnelly 1866
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Even the king is brought back to life by the doctor after being stabbed by the wily Turk in the mummers' play.
Letters: Morris dancing beats hunting for Boxing Day fun 2011
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We meet mummers, hobby horses, tups and all kinds of other fascinating festivities.
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Afternoon indoor games, evening masques and banquets a seemingly endless procession of entertainers in the great hall: mummers, acrobats, tumblers, merchants with fabulous, wares to sell -- anyone with something to offer the jaundiced courtiers was welcome at Greenwich in this season.
Dearly Beloved 2010
bilby commented on the word mummers
"When you are hearing a matter between party and party, if you chance to be pinched with the colic, you make faces like mummers, set up the bloody flag against all patience, and, in roaring for a chamber-pot, dismiss the controversy bleeding, the more entangled by your hearing..."
- William Shakespeare, 'The Tragedy of Coriolanus'.
August 28, 2009