Macau

Proper noun

Macau

1. A city, special administrative region, and peninsula in China, west of Hong Kong.
   • Open 24 hours a day and seven days a week, Macau's 35 casinos entertain around 30 million visitors each year, making over 30 billion euros in revenue. These are figures which make the US gambling city of Las Vegas look like a desert village.[…]
   • Macau is the only place in China where gambling is officially permitted. Until the end of 1999, the peninsula was a Portuguese colony. Since it was handed back to China, the city of 600,000 people located at the mouth of the Pearl River has been a largely autonomous Special Administrative Region...2015 September 12, Jochen Faget, “Crisis in China's gambling paradise”, in DW News, archived from the original on 12 Sep 2015

   Synonyms:

   Aomen

2. (historical) a former Portuguese colony in modern southern China between 1557 and 1999.
   • When you depart from Macau to ye other coaſt, you must put out at the Eaſt chanel, if the wind bee Northweſt, if not, then you cannot paſſe, that way, but you muſt ſayle thorough the ſouthweſt chanel, which is a good way to paſſe out, running from the point of Varella, right unto the land on the...1598, “24 Of the courſe out of the Hauen of Macau in China to the Iſland of Pulo Tymon, & the ſtraight of Sincapura.”, in W. P., transl., The Nauigation of the Portingales into the Eaſt Indies...
   • SOuthward from the County of Quancheufu, lie many ſmall Iſlands in the Sea ; on one of which, being a little hanging Iſle, or rather a Rock, joyn'd to a great Iſland, lieth the City Makao, otherwiſe call'd Amacao, Machao, and Makau, poſſeſs'd by the Portugueſe, on a Promontory, ſo naturally...[1671, Arnoldus Montanus, translated by John Ogilby, Atlas Chinensis, London: Tho. Johnson, translation of original in Dutch, →OCLC, page 531