Other forms: miming, mimed, mimes
To mime is to act something out without speaking. Mime it, a mime artist, mimed the whole thing.
As an art form, mime uses gesture alone, and the white-faced street performer is the version most people picture. It also means pretending to sing or play along with a recording — miming to a backing track — which is a standing controversy in live television. Note mimic, which means to imitate somebody's voice or manner; and that mime and mimic come from the same Greek word for an actor.
1verbmimeTo act something out without speaking.
“Unable to speak the language, he mimed eating to ask where the restaurant was.”
2verbpretendTo pretend to sing or play along with a recording.
“The singer was caught miming when the song kept playing after she dropped the microphone.”
mime is a wordless acting.
Greek mimos meant an imitator or actor. Latin took it as mimus for a kind of low comic performance, and English has had the word since Old English — one of very few Greek theatre words to arrive that early.
French
mime — mimic actor
Ancient Greek
μῖμος — imitator, actor
Latin
mimus
Old English
mīma — a buffoon, jester, mime
Middle English
mime
English, today
mime
Possibly from Middle English mime, from Old English mīma (“a buffoon, jester, mime”), from Latin mimus, from Ancient Greek μῖμος (“imitator, actor”), but more likely re-borrowed in modern times from French mime (“mimic actor”), from the same source.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA