mau-mau


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mau-mau

 (mou′mou′)
tr.v. mau·maued, mau·mau·ing, mau·maus Often Offensive
To attack or denounce vociferously, especially so as to intimidate.

[After the Mau Mau, a secret society of Kikuyu insurgents that led a rebellion against the ruling Europeans in Kenya in the 1950s, perhaps from Kikuyu mau-mau, sound of the voracious gobbling of a hyena.]
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
References in periodicals archive ?
Speaking during a fundraising at Mau-Mau market in Bunyala South, Budalangi, on Sunday, Ojaamong urged groups' leaders to forward proposals to be given grants of at least Sh300,000.
Justice Kanyi Kimondo, while sitting at the High Court in Murang'a, heard that the sufferings were caused during the period 1952 to 1963 during the Mau-Mau or freedom fighters' struggle for independence in Kenya.
The British government initially took the same stance it the cases brought Kenyans, members of the Mau-Mau tribe that also accused the colonial power of torture.
In which African country were the Mau-Mau nationalists active in the 1950s?
LOOSE CANNONS: 101 MYTHS, MISHAPS AND MISADVENTURES OF MILITARY HISTORY exposes many long-held myths about military leaders and operations, from the idea that Hitler was a vegetarian obsessed by the occult to the invention of the 'Mau-Mau' organization and the fact that the Japanese were trying to complete their own nuclear warhead when the Americans beat them.
From Mau-Mau rebellion in Kenya to the Afghanistan of Massoud, Tito's Yugoslavia, the Algeria of the independence movement, Rhodesia, Che Guevarra and the Huks in the Philippines, he discusses the fundamental principles of what makes a good' rebellion or an effective counter-insurrection.
Abiodun Alao's Mau-Mau Warrior (1846030-242, $17.95) features color photos published for the first time as it covers the Mau-Mau Uprising of 1952-60, long presented as a primitive uprising and seldom analyzed for its strategy and skills.
Historical mysteries pertinent to the plot revolve around the cultures of the Akamba and Masai in the context of hunting both a big black-manned lion and Mau-Mau rebel escapees.
Conservatives are only just learning to mau-mau the media and government with tactics and language on loan from the P.C.
He says veterans of the Mau-Mau uprisings could win millions of pounds for injuries and loss of property.