amok
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /əˈmɒk/
ipa: /əˈmʌk/
ipa: /əˈmɒk/
ipa: /əˈmʊk/
rhymes: -ɒk
rhymes: -ʌk
Forms: form: amoks
form: amuck
form: amock
Etymology: From Portuguese amouco, from Malay amuk (“to go on a killing spree”). The term first appeared in English around the 16th century, associated with the people of Malaysia and Java, first described in the 1516 text The Book of Duarte Barbosa, which was translated to English by Henry E. J. Stanley.
Senses: glosses: One who runs amok; in Malay and Moro/Philippine culture, one who attempts to kill many others, especially expecting that they will be killed themselves.
examples: text: On the morning of the amok this person met him, and asked him to work at his boat “He replied that he could not, he was very much afflicted.”[…]The amok took place on the 8th, the trial on the 13th, and the execution on the 15th July,—all within eight days.
ref: 1849, “Malay Amoks Referred to Mahomedanism”, in J. R. Logan, editor, The Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, volume III, Singapore: […] G. M. Frederick, “Sentence of death upon a Malay convicted of running amok”, page 461:
text: The late assassinations of Lord Mayo and Chief Justice Norman, though not committed by Malays, would be called “amoks.”[…]In the case of the Lieutenant-Governor of Singapore, his being “amoked” appears to have been a mere chance collision, the intended victim having been another native by whom the “amoker” had been imprisoned. The real cause of the “amok” was the imprisonment—an insult to a descendant of the Prophet, and how artfully was the intended revenge concealed from the jailor![…]Now, I have perceived since people have been hung several times in Malacca and Singapore, amoks, murders, and piracies have lessened,—just in the same manner as when you see heavy squalls, thunder and lightning, that these being in truth dangerous and frightful, but they clear the atmosphere, carrying off all bad vapours, from which proceed sicknesses: thus come good health and tranquility to mankind.[…]The population of the tropics are akin to their climate,—generally calm, listless, and dreamy,—but these amoks intermittently, like Sumatra squalls, burst forth and bear down all before them. Yet, like the squall, the frenzied amoker has but a short career,[…]
ref: 1874, Translations from the Hakayit Abdulla (bin Abdulkadar), Mūnshi, London: Henry S. King & Co., […], pages 133, 233 and 234:
text: For the convenience of this paper I shall call the man who runs Amok an “Amoker,” and the crime “Amoking.” /[…]I believe Penang has claimed that the Chief Justice’s (Sir Wm. Norris) sentence, which reads like one of those of the middle ages, and which I will give in detail later on, passed upon an Amoker, and carried out within eight days of the Amok in 1846, was the means of stamping out Amok entirely for years, but I can obtain no reliable information in proof of this. I intend trying to give a brief sketch of Amok and its causes, some notes on recent cases, and to point out a possible field in which its pathology may eventually be determined.
ref: 1893 July, W. Gilmore Ellis, “The Amok of the Malays”, in D. Hack Tuke, Geo. H. Savage, editors, The Journal of Mental Science, volume XXXIX, number 166 (new series, 130), part 1, “Original Articles”, London: J. and A. Churchill, […], page 325:
glosses: The act of running amok.