Etymology

ushabti

U1S1H4A1B3T1I1

Today it means: In Ancient Egypt, a figurine of a dead person, placed in their tomb to do their work for them in the afterlife. Full definition →

Egyptian w-S-b-t:y-A53
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Egyptian · borrowed fromw-S-b-t:y-A53“ushabti”
  2. English todayushabti

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SA-wA-b-t:y-A53 (šꜣwꜣbtj), perhaps from S-wA-b-M1 (šwꜣb, “persea (tree)”), which may have been the material they were originally made from.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.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.