Word.ws English Dictionary

Mabo

Mabo proper noun: the High Court case Mabo v Queensland (No 2), which rejected the doctrine of terra nullius in favour of the common-law doctrine of aboriginal title.

Proper noun

Mabo

  1. (Australia, informal) The High Court case Mabo v Queensland (No 2), which rejected the doctrine of terra nullius in favour of the common-law doctrine of aboriginal title.

Origin of Mabo

After Eddie Mabo (1936–1992), who began the case against the government. Compare Roe after the case of Roe v. Wade.

Questions about Mabo

What does Mabo mean?
Mabo means the High Court case Mabo v Queensland (No 2), which rejected the doctrine of terra nullius in favour of the common-law doctrine of aboriginal title.
What part of speech is Mabo?
Mabo is a proper noun.

Words near Mabo in the dictionary

  1. Mables
  2. Mablethorpe
  3. Mablethorpe and Sutton
  4. Mableton
  5. Mabnang
  6. Mabo
  7. mabok
  8. Maboko
  9. mabolo
  10. mabolos
  11. Mabon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Mabo (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-Mabo.ogg.

Cite this entry: “Mabo.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mabo. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.