mw

Auhelawa

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /mʷ/

Letter

mw (upper case Mw)

1. A letter of the Auhelawa alphabet.

Egyptian

Etymology

An origin in a form such as Proto-Afroasiatic *maʔ- has been suggested; compare Proto-Semitic *māy-. The word is a frozen plural, with an original root *m or *mj, the latter of which is supported by the phonetic use of the hieroglyph to write nmjw (“dwarf”).

Pronunciation

• (modern Egyptological) IPA^(key): /muː/
  • Conventional anglicization: mu

Noun

 m

1. water (substance)
   • c. 1900 BCE, The Instructions of Kagemni (pPrisse/pBN 183) lines 1.5–1.6:

     jw jkn n(j) mw ꜥḫm.f jbt jw mḥ{t}⟨w⟩ r(ꜣ) m šww smn.f jb

     For a cup of water quenches thirst, for a mouthful of šww-herbs makes the heart firm.

2. area covered by water, water as opposed to land or sky
3. body of water; sea, lake, river, etc.
4. rain
5. fluid, especially bodily fluid
   • c. 1900 BCE – 1839 BCE, Coffin Texts, version B1C (coffin of Sepi III, Cairo CG 28083) spell 755:

     wrḏ ꜥwt m ws(j)r nj wrḏ zpwj snwj nj ḥwꜣ.sn ꜣd.sn nj jr mw ḏw

     The limbs in Osiris are weary, but won’t be weary, won’t be weary, they won’t putrefy or decay, won’t make foul fluid (literally, “evil water”).

6. semen
   • c. 1550 BCE – 1295 BCE, Great Hymn to Osiris (Stela of Amenmose, Louvre C 286) lines 16–17:

     
     

     sṯzt nnw n(j) wrd(w)-jb ḫnpt mw.f jrt jwꜥw šdt nḫn m wꜥꜥw nj rḫ bw.f jm bst sw ꜥ.f nḫtw m ẖnw wsḫt gbb

     who raised the limpness of the weary-hearted, who took in his water (semen), who made an heir, who suckled the child in solitude where his location was unknown, who introduced him when his arm grew strong into the hall of Geb.

7. blood
8. juice or sap from a plant

Inflection

Alternative forms

Alternative hieroglyphic writings of mw  

mw	mwy	mw	mw	mw	mw	mw	mw	mw	mw
	only attested in the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant; possibly to be interpreted differently

Alternative hieroglyphic writings of mw  

mwy	mw	mw
in the sense ‘semen’	in the sense ‘semen’	in the sense ‘semen’

Derived terms

• (mwy, “to be watery”)

Descendants

• Demotic: mw
  • Akhmimic Coptic: ⲙⲁⲩ (mau), ⲙⲁⲟⲩ (maou)
  • Bohairic Coptic: ⲙⲱⲟⲩ (mōou)
  • Fayyumic Coptic: ⲙⲁⲩ (mau)
  • Sahidic Coptic: ⲙⲟⲟⲩ (moou)
  • → Ancient Greek: μῶυ (môu), μῶϋ (môü), μῶς (môs), -μοου (-moou)

References

• “mw (lemma ID 69000)”, in Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae‎, Corpus issue 17, Web app version 2.01 edition, Tonio Sebastian Richter & Daniel A. Werning by order of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert & Peter Dils by order of the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, 2004–15 December 2022
• Erman, Adolf, Grapow, Hermann (1928) Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache‎, volume 2, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, →ISBN, pages 50.7–53.1, 53.4
• Faulkner, Raymond Oliver (1962) A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, Oxford: Griffith Institute, →ISBN, page 105
• Takács, Gábor (1999–2007) Etymological Dictionary of Egyptian, Leiden: Brill, →ISBN, →ISBN

Indonesian

Verb

mw

1. (text messaging) Abbreviation of mau.