Art & MusicGreek → English
Pantomime
/ˈpæntəmaɪm/noun
Wordless performance through gesture, or in Britain a comic Christmas stage show.
The Greek roots
παντός
pantós
of everything, all
μῖμος
mîmos
imitator, actor
Literally: “imitator of everything”
The story of the word
A παντόμιμος in imperial Rome was a solo dancer who played every character in a story while musicians and a chorus carried the words. English took the performer's title in the seventeenth century, applied it to the dumb-show, then to the Christmas entertainment with its cross-dressed dame and its audience shouting back. Of the Greek, only the name survives; the pantomime dame would have baffled the man it described.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
mimemimicpandemicpanorama
In a sentence
The children were taken to the pantomime the week before Christmas.
He went through an elaborate pantomime of looking for his wallet.