mortician
Americannoun
-
morticians
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of mortician
An Americanism dating back to 1890–95; mort(uary) + -ician
Explanation
Lots of kids want to grow up to be astronauts, firefighters, or doctors. Not too many want to be morticians, which makes sense: a mortician runs a funeral home. One of the saddest facts of life is that we all die, but that fact is a little less sad if you're a mortician — their business depends on death. Morticians — also called undertakers and funeral directors — do various jobs, such as planning a funeral, helping people pick a coffin, and preparing the body of the person who died. Morticians also need to be skilled at comforting, because they are constantly working with people who are sad and angry at the death of their family or friends.
Vocabulary lists containing mortician
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
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A Lesson Before Dying
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Vocabulary Video Contest (2013) - List 1
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Gebbai the mortician spoke with steely-eyed resolve, but it began to crack when he remembered one young man.
From Barron's ● Apr. 27, 2026
She trained as a forensic pathologist and worked as a mortician in Mexico City.
From BBC ● Sep. 18, 2024
The once unidentified man was in jail accused of being a thief, and he was accidentally mummified by a mortician experimenting with new embalming techniques.
From Reuters ● Oct. 7, 2023
Workers lifted a tarp for privacy as John Hill, who shared an ancestor with the general, helped a mortician gather the remains in a body bag.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 13, 2022
There was a group called mortician bees whose pitiful job it was to rake the dead bees out of the hive and keep everything on the clean side.
From "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd
During a previous spike in gold prices, Clark said, people were asking morticians for permission to pull gold teeth from the mouths of dead family members.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 18, 2025
From gravediggers to morticians, funeral directors to coroners, these workers carry deep psychic wounds of war — and have few others who can relate to them.
From New York Times ● Jun. 18, 2022
The head of the Texas Funeral Directors Association brought in an extra funeral coach along with other morticians — some experts at the art of facial reconstruction — to assist.
From Washington Post ● May 30, 2022
Someone joked that morticians always had money and she’d thought about her interests—architecture, computers, landscape design.
From Slate ● Apr. 30, 2022
The Catholic calendar in my bedroom was printed by W. F. Gormley and Sons, morticians.
From "Hunger of Memory" by Richard Rodriguez
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
