Mirach
name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The abdominal wall. obsolete
"Gordonius[…]confirms as much, putting the “matter of melancholy sometimes in the stomach, liver, heart, brain, spleen, myrach, hypochondries, whenas the melancholy humour resides there, or the liver is not well cleansed from melancholy blood.”"
- 1 A red giant, visible as a second-magnitude orange-red star marking the waist or girdle of the chained woman in the northern constellation of Andromeda.
"[Mirach was described in the Alfonsine Tables of 1521 as super mirat, from which has been derived its present title, as well as the occasional forms Mirac, Merach, Mirar, Mirath, Mirax, etc.; mirat probably coming from the 1515 Almagest's super mizar, the Arabic mi'zar, a girdle or waist-cloth. Scaliger, the great critical scholar of the 15th century, adopted this Mizar as a title, and Riccioli followed him in its use, thus confounding the star with ζ Ursae Majoris.]"
Example
More examples"Gordonius[…]confirms as much, putting the “matter of melancholy sometimes in the stomach, liver, heart, brain, spleen, myrach, hypochondries, whenas the melancholy humour resides there, or the liver is not well cleansed from melancholy blood.”"
Etymology
From Medieval Latin mirac, mirach, from Arabic مَرَقّ (maraqq, “delicate and sensible part of the venter”), from رَقَّ (raqqa, “to be soft”).
Perhaps a corruption of Arabic مِئْزَر (miʔzar).
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.