Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
African secret society devoted to ending European rule, 1950, from the Kikuyu language of Kenya.
Wikipedia
Mau Mau is a card game for 2 or more players that is popular in Germany, the United States, Brazil, Poland, the Netherlands and some other areas. For more than 5 players, 2 packs of cards may be used. Whoever gets rid of his/her cards first wins the game. Mau Mau is very similar to the game Uno and Flaps, both belonging to the larger Crazy Eights or shedding family of card games. However Mau Mau is played with a regular deck of playing cards.
Mau Mau may refer to:
- an anti-colonial rebel of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya
- Mau Mau Island, or White Island, in Brooklyn, New York
- Mau Mau (game), a card game
- Gallery Mau Mau, an "art space" in Cape Town, South Africa
- Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, a 1970 book by Tom Wolfe
- The Mau Maus, a 1950s New York City street gang
- Mau Mau (1955 film) a shockumentary exploitation film directed by Elwood Price and narrated by Chet Huntley
- Mau Mau, a film released as part of The Black Man's Land Trilogy
Mau Mau is an Italian band from Turin. It was formed in 1991 as a continuation of the underground cult group I Loschi Dezi.
Usage examples of "mau mau".
He'd also spent much of the 1950s leading a countergang against the Mau Mau in the forests of the Aberdares mountains.
But for the past two years he'd been out in Kenya, clearing up the Mau Mau business, which seemed to drag on forever.
He quoted Fanon, Farrakhan, Salid, Wright, Cleaver, King, Garvey, he talked about the Rastas and the Muslims and the BLA and the American Mau Mau, he talked about Toussaint L'Ouverture and Chaka Zulu and Bobby Seale and Nat Turner.
Munro's father had the bad luck to be killed by Mau Mau guerillas in 1956.
There's ritual killings by the Mau Mau, and plenty other Africans, by Chinese, Indians, Patagonians, and all sorts.
Even his name will help: Deedan Kimathi was the most effective general in the Mau Mau emergency a century ago.