mirach

plural mirachs · alternative myrach

1. obsoletemedicineThe abdominal wall.First known use 15th–17th c.

   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.”

   1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition I, section 2, member 5, subsection ii

1. astronomyA 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.

   1 more example

   [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.]

   1899, Richard Hinckley Allen, Star-Names and Their Meanings, New York: G. E. Stechert, page 36

   Synonyms: β Andromedae, β And, Beta Andromedae