mummy brown
Syllables: mum·my brownUK/ˌmʌmi ˈbɹaʊn/
mummy brown noun: a brown pigment originally prepared from the ground-up remains of Egyptian animal or human mummies mixed with bitumen, etc.
Noun
mummy brown (usually uncountable, plural mummy browns)
- A brown pigment originally prepared from the ground-up remains of Egyptian animal or human mummies mixed with bitumen, etc.
- Mummy brown.—The bituminous substance found in and enveloping Egyptian mummies; it may be considered partly animal and partly bituminous matter.[1842, G[eorge William] Francis, “Application of Chemistry”, in Chemical Experiments; Illustrating the Theory, Practice, and Application of the Science of Chemistry, […], London: G. Berger, […]...
- [I]nasmuch as from their very nature or origin the various specimens of Mummy-Brown must differ more or less, there is not the least reliance to be placed upon them: one is in the dark as to his materials, and can predict nothing with even ordinary certainty as to the result of their employment. It...1849, [Laughton Osborn], “Summary of the Generally-received Opinions with Regard to the Solidity of the Various Colors Now in Use for Oilpainting”, in Handbook of Young Artists and Amateurs in...
- Synonyms:
- mummy
- The colour of this pigment, a variable brown intermediate between raw umber and burnt umber.
- I then placed it [a wood frog (Lithobates sylvaticus)] in an open window on a whitish bottom, and the next day it was light brown. At 2 p.m., August 24th, I put it on a jet-black shelf, with black surroundings. Forty-five minutes later it was very dark, nearly mummy brown[…], but darker.1893 August, Clarence M. Weed, “The Color Changes of Frogs”, in The Popular Science Monthly, volume XLIII, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton and Company, […], →OCLC, page 492
- Mummy Browns, from the crushings of Egyptian corpses, for the mortally ill and melancholy.2001, M[ichelle] R. Lovric, “The Language of Colour”, in Carnevale, London: Virago, →ISBN; republished London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015, →ISBN, part 1
Examples of mummy brown in a sentence
- Mummy brown comes from the catacombs of Egypt.1875, “Color: The Origin of Pigments and Their Chemical Action”, in The Antefix Papers. Papers on Art Educational Subjects, Read at the...
- And once he [Edward Burne-Jones] descended in broad daylight with a tube of ‘Mummy Brown’ in his hand, saying that he had discovered it was made of dead Pharaohs and we must bury it accordingly.1937, Rudyard Kipling, “A Very Young Person: 1865–1878”, in Something of Myself: For My Friends Known and Unknown, London: Macmillan and...
- Mummy brown was a common shade in artists’ colors until 1925, but it cannot be bought from any paint shop today.2014, Victoria Finlay, “Mummy Brown: Funeral for Pharaohs”, in The Brilliant History of Color in Art, Los Angeles, Calif.: J. Paul Getty...
Synonyms of mummy brown
Forms of mummy brown
| plural | mummy browns |
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Words that rhyme with mummy brown
19 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about mummy brown
- What does mummy brown mean?
- Mummy brown means a brown pigment originally prepared from the ground-up remains of Egyptian animal or human mummies mixed with bitumen, etc.
- How do you use mummy brown in a sentence?
- Mummy brown comes from the catacombs of Egypt.
- What part of speech is mummy brown?
- Mummy brown is a noun.
- How do you pronounce mummy brown?
- Mummy brown is pronounced /ˌmʌmi ˈbɹaʊn/ (UK).
- What is the plural of mummy brown?
- The plural of mummy brown is mummy browns.
Words near mummy brown in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mummy brown (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-mummy brown.ogg.
Cite this entry: “mummy brown.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mummy_brown. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.