| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| mau-mau |
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| PRONUNCIATION: |  mou mou |
| TRANSITIVE VERB: | Inflected forms: mau·maued, mau·mau·ing, mau·maus
Informal To attack or denounce vociferously, especially so as to intimidate: “In years past, [the civil rights leadership] … would mau-mau the government or the corporate sector or the white community” (Joseph Perkins, Atlanta Constitution January 12, 1994). | | ETYMOLOGY: | After the Mau Mau, a secret society of Kikuyu terrorists that led a rebellion against the ruling Europeans in Kenya in the 1950s, from Kikuyu mau-mau, sound of the voracious gobbling of a hyena.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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