mummer

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English

WOTD – 16 March 2008
Mummer in a parade

Etymology

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”).

Pronunciation

Noun

mummer (plural mummers)

  1. A person who dons a disguising costume, as for a parade or a festival.
  2. An actor in a pantomime; one who communicates entirely through gesture and facial expression.
    • 1883, Adele Marion Fielde, “舞 (bú)”, in A Pronouncing and Defining Dictionary of the Swatow Dialect, Arranged According to Syllables and Tones, Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, page 16:
      [To] perform as mummers, who act in relays of eight, at the worship of ancestors.

Synonyms

  • (actor in a pantomime): mime

Translations

Verb

mummer (third-person singular simple present mummers, present participle mummering, simple past and past participle mummered)

  1. Synonym of mum (“to act in pantomime or dumb show”)
    • 1976, Cake and Cockhorse, volume 7, page 220:
      There is a general agreement that niggering [blackface performance] took over from mummering to keep up the old custom.
    • 1988, Chris Brookes, Memorial University of Newfoundland. Institute of Social and Economic Research, A Public Nuisance: A History of the Mummers Troupe (page 53)
      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,
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