mummery
Americannoun
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mummeries
plural
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the performance of mummers.
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any performance, ceremony, etc., regarded as absurd, false, or ostentatious.
noun
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a performance by mummers
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hypocritical or ostentatious ceremony
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of mummery
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:
But what was once the norm can now seem a kind of ableist mummery, which this production attempts to sidestep by offering a Richard with no physical impairments at all.
From New York Times ● Jul. 11, 2022
Typically, contemporary novelists speak reverently of their form, as if the result were some kind of sacred object, so Alice’s position has a refreshing lack of mummery.
From Slate ● Sep. 1, 2021
“You know what that means,” is all he offered, and, after an evening of portentous headgear mummery, this hint at abdication should not be taken lightly.
From Slate ● Dec. 20, 2019
It's all mummery and flummery, and conducted with a winning amateurishness.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 1, 2012
If we lose the war, she ought to take up mummery, she has a gift for it.
From "A Clash of Kings" by George R.R. Martin
He grew cold to newsmen, turned his press conferences into funereal mummeries, finally began canceling them altogether.
From Time Magazine Archive
Nor was it ''mere timidity or fanaticism or calculated hardness: it was a deep and speculative thing: hatred of all shams, scorn of all mummeries, a bitter, merciless pleasure in the hard facts.
From Time Magazine Archive
But what useful purpose can these mummeries serve?
From The Abbatial Crosier or Bonaik and Septimine. A Tale of a Medieval Abbess by Eugène Sue
I suppose so: but what need you or I care for such absurd mummeries?
From Walladmor: And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. In Two Volumes. Vol. I. by Thomas De Quincey
"Do you think you are carrying out my will by performing all the mummeries you have taken part in to-day, while your heart is full of the things of this world?"
From Library of the World's Best literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 12 by Various
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.
