Word.ws English Dictionary

mau-mau

mau-mau verb: to menace through intimidating tactics; to intimidate, harass; to terrorize.

Verb

mau-mau (third-person singular simple present mau-maus, present participle mau-mauing, simple past and past participle mau-maued)

  1. (transitive) To menace through intimidating tactics; to intimidate, harass; to terrorize.
    • It was my first experience with the phenomenon that would later be called "mau-mauing the flack catcher."2005, Béla Szabados, Once Upon a Time in the West

Forms of mau-mau

third-person singular presentmau-maus
present participlemau-mauing
past participlemau-maued
pastmau-maued

Origin of mau-mau

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.

Words formed from mau-mau

Questions about mau-mau

What does mau-mau mean?
Mau-mau means to menace through intimidating tactics; to intimidate, harass; to terrorize.
What part of speech is mau-mau?
Mau-mau is a verb.
What is the past tense of mau-mau?
The past tense of mau-mau is mau-maued.

Words near mau-mau in the dictionary

  1. matériels
  2. matés
  3. matë
  4. MAU
  5. Mau Mau
  6. mau-mau
  7. mau-maued
  8. mau-mauer
  9. mau-mauers
  10. mau-mauing
  11. mau-maus

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mau-mau (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.

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