Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. 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).
Wiktionary
- v. transitive To menace through intimidating tactics; to intimidate, harass; to terrorize.
Etymologies
- From Mau Mau, the name of a group of anti-British insurgents in Kenya, who were noted in Europe for their (alleged) extreme violence and brutality. (Wiktionary)
- 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. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“That Huckabee was able to associate the President with the terms mau-mau and madrasah on successive days has to qualify as sheer, surgical brilliance.”
“Going downtown to mau-mau the bureaucrats got to be the routine practice in San Francisco.”
VDARE.com: Blog Articles » Print » What’s A “Community Organizer”?
“Another important reason to mau-mau the press about sexism: when you later gin up a B.S. controversy, enough journalists — you don't need all of them — will feel obligated to report it as a legitimate, he-said-she-said, who-knows-the-real-truth story, even if they really see it to be a baldfacedly cynical campaign ploy.”
“They have conditioned you to give in when they mau-mau.”
Do Facts Matter?, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“Wittgenstein might complain that the person was trying to mau-mau him of that person would not take that “no” for an answer, as the they.”
“The Democrats will try to mau-mau the public but it will have the reverse effect.”
On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with...
“The Republicans will immediately begin to mau-mau them for their obvious bias and they will bend over backwards to "prove" they aren't in the tank for Obama.”
“As a Member of Congress and Presidential candidate, he has listened endlessly to Democrats mau-mau their opponents with rhetoric about "fairness" and the "deficit" and, best of all, the "investment needs" of the government, aka, spending.”
“Then there are the insurance companies, which seem to think they can mau-mau Treasury into cutting them in.”
“The mau-mau will be "sure, you say you just oppose his thoroughgoing liberal positions, but that's just cover for your racism.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘mau-mau’.
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Hyphenated Repeats
Exactly reduplicated words connected by a hyphen.
aye-aye, cleek-cleek, arc-arc, killy-killy, dum-dum, tom-tom, argon-argon, carbon-carbon, win-win, lose-lose, bye-bye, choo-choo and 113 more...
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suzyg's Words
brandish, recompence, shopping, dichotomy, paradigm, reverse osmosis, anyway, despite, drunk, degenerate, insipid, grateful and 438 more...
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So little time...
i really need to bulk up my vocabulary
coccydynia, maudlin, etiolate, cenotaph, chthonic, orotund, eclat, spendthrift, incendiary, corpulent, parsimonious, bescumber and 91 more...
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harveythechainsaw's Words
lickspittle, syllogism, redounds, boffo, maw, flibbertigibbet, elan, phalanx, plinth, wonk, janjaweed, madreporic and 142 more...
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Scenariot
Rebellious destruction, police and protestors, or just angry mobs.
bedlam, chaos, havoc, destruction, cataclysm, devastation, mayhem, plunder, ravage, wreckage, destroy, blitzkrieg and 112 more...
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You Can Say That Again
dum-dum, dik-dik, doo-doo, aye-aye, bling-bling, bye-bye, boo-boo, buddy-buddy, frou-frou, gado-gado, gee-gee, gang-gang and 32 more...
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words I learned from the New Yorker
janissary, refulgent, mau-mau, mugwumps, cod-historical, peripatetic, chthonic, dispositive, ontological
Tweets
Looking for tweets for mau-mau.
bilby Hmmmm. At work we have a volunteer called Mau-Mau who helps out on Fridays. He's from Myanmar. Apr 28, 2009
sionnach I believe that one of Tom Wolfe's early essay collections was called "Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak-catchers". Apr 28, 2009
kezboard The only person I've ever witnessed use this word is Mickey Kaus. The Mickey Kaus definition of this word, as far as I can tell, is "bullying, when done by liberals". Apr 28, 2009