mortician
Americannoun
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:
At a makeshift morgue in Khartoum, engineer turned mortician Ali Gebbai clicked through a spreadsheet of the dead.
From Barron's ● Apr. 27, 2026
Lucy likens her job to being a mortician or life insurance broker.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 12, 2025
"We go from service to lifesaving to mortician, dealing with dead bodies and then doing crowd control," the 40-year-old says.
From BBC ● Mar. 9, 2025
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
It was her public face the mortician had designed with his dubious art.
From "Hunger of Memory" by Richard Rodriguez
Fellow morticians were also alarmed at the uptick in the number of bodies cremated by the Lamb Funeral Home, a respected, family-run establishment and pillar of the Southern California mortuary business for generations.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 1, 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
Definitions 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.
