mortify
The relevant meaning here is the fourth sense listed in the first edition of the OED, "To bring into subjection ... by the practice of self-denial, abstinence, or bodily discipline." Mostly, when people use the word this way, they think of mortifying the flesh ("the body, its appetites and passions") rather than something emotional or abstract like Pooh-Bah's pride. They think, for example, of Christian flagellants.
The sense of "humiliate" or "embarrass" is the last of the senses the OED lists and possibly the last sense to develop. (The first usage of the word in this sense listed is from 1691, while most of the rest appear to arise in the late 14th century.)
A similar use of the word exists in Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 The Strange History of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in the opening description of the modest and good Mr. Utterson:
At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintage; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others; somethings wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. (Stevenson 1)
This discussion is based on the definition of the word mortify in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which requires a little explanation.
To Act I or Act II of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.
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(c) Copyright 1998 Sharon Cogdill, dramaturg for this production and author of this website.
College of Fine Arts and Humanities
St. Cloud State University
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Last update: 19 May 1998.