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mortician

[mawr-tish-uh n]
See more synonyms for mortician on Thesaurus.com
noun
  1. funeral director.
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Origin of mortician

An Americanism dating back to 1890–95; mort(uary) + -ician
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018

Related Words

embalmer

Examples from the Web for mortician

Contemporary Examples

Historical Examples

  • Marry Miss Dutton, and you'll be a scarecrow within a year, and require the services of the mortician within two!

    Bunch Grass

    Horace Annesley Vachell

  • The really smart way nowadays of bidding good-bye to the world is to go to the establishment of a "mortician."

    Turns about Town

    Robert Cortes Holliday

  • Here I discovered that to the mind of the mortician towels belong to the Dark Ages.

    Turns about Town

    Robert Cortes Holliday

  • I remember one who was studying to become a mortician and he got several very expensive books on the subject.

  • He had to go back and take the sleeping medicine to be ready for the arrival of the mortician in the morning.

    No Strings Attached

    Lester del Rey

British Dictionary definitions for mortician

mortician

noun
  1. mainly US another word for undertaker
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Word Origin

C19: from mortuary + -ician, as in physician
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for mortician

n.

1895, American English, coined from mortuary + -ician, as in physician.

An undertaker will no longer be known as an "undertaker and embalmer." In the future he will be known as the "mortician." This was decided on at the second day's meeting of the Funeral Directors' Association of Kentucky, which was held in Louisville. ["The Medical Herald," July 1895]
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper