English Explanatory Dictionary

ushabti

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. In Ancient Egypt, a figurine of a dead person, placed in their tomb to do their work for them in the afterlife.

Pronunciation

/uːˈʃabti/

Word forms

ushabti ushabtiu ushabtis shabti shawabti

Etymology

Borrowed from Egyptian w-S-b-t:y-A53 (wšbtj, “ushabti”, literally “answerer”), by folk etymology from earlier SA-wA-b-t:y-A53 (šꜣwꜣbtj), perhaps from S-wA-b-M1 (šwꜣb, “persea (tree)”), which may have been the material they were originally made from. The variant forms shawabti, shabti are borrowed directly from the earlier Egyptian forms šꜣwꜣbtj and šꜣbtj, respectively.

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on U Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary