![]() ![]() There was the Forbes 400 intern who took it upon herself to arrange a meeting with the then-fugitive financier Marc Rich … in Geneva, Switzerland.” Forbes 6/30/15). For whatever reason, “amok” is, as the Oxford English Dictionary notes, “Very rarely with any other verb than run.”Īlthough the idiom “run amok” has its roots in a violent rampage, in today’s usage it usually means little more than “breaking rules” or “wildly exceeding one’s authority” (“Forbes has its own tales of interns run amuck. Probably because incidents of doped-up loonies waving whatever the plural of “kris” is were rare in England, a figurative sense of “amok” meaning “heedlessly, headlong, recklessly” appeared in the late 17th century, almost always in the construction “running amuck” (“I … might have run ‘amok’ against society but I preferred that society should run ‘amok’ against me.” Thoreau, Walden, 1854). ![]() One 1773 account explains the word: “To run a muck in the original sense of the word, is to get intoxicated with opium, and then rush into the street with a drawn weapon, and kill whoever comes in the way, till the party is himself either killed or taken prisoner.” (The “drawn weapon” was usually a nasty big knife called a “kris.”) One might well suspect that such accounts of the phenomenon by Europeans might have been somewhat exaggerated and culturally biased in any case, the word entered English with the same general meaning of “murderous frenzy.” The forms “amok” and “amuck” are considered equally correct in English today, though “a muck” was apparently preferred by the poets Dryden and Byron. “Amok,” which today is often spelled “amuck,” comes from the Malay word “amoq,” meaning “a state of murderous frenzy.” In English, the word “amok” dates back to the 16th century and the first contacts between Europeans and the Malay inhabitants. I drive as safely as I can, but that seems to inspire fits of road rage among other drivers, so now I mostly stay home. And that was before car dashboards turned into entertainment appliances. I remember reading, more than 20 years ago, a complaint by a German visiting the US about American drivers’ “poor lane discipline,” apparently referring to our collective inability to distinguish between driving to Grandma’s house and a car chase in one of the “Bourne” movies. I know what you mean about driving these days. Then I thought to myself, “What in the world is ‘amok’ and why can you only ‘run amok’?” Can you shed any light on this odd word? - Fernando. “Amuck” is an older spelling and less used now, “amok” being the more modern spelling.Land of the Free, Home of the Murderous Frenzy.ĭear Word Detective: This morning, I told my wife that the maneuvers of several of my fellow drivers was a case of stupidity run amok. It referred to the Amuco warriors of Malaysia and Java, who were fierce in their battles and preferred death over surrender. Origin The phrase originated from the Southeast Asian term amok (spelled amuk, amuck, amuco), which meant a murderous frenzy or rage. They totured that huge bull so bad and finally he ran amuck.The terrified crowd ran amok all the over the place when they the sound of an explosion nearby.Presented with irresistible deals, the shoppers were running amuck at the store.Armed with a knife, the deranged man ran amok at the generally peaceful neighbourhood.While having a class party, the students ran amok at the club.With no clear directions in place, the crowd ran amok at the show.The mob entered the building and ran amok, disrupting everything and leaving behind chaos in their wake.With the teacher absent, the children were running amok in their class, upsetting the furniture and creating a mess.When the police arrived, they were confronted with a group of protesters running amuck in the lanes of the old town.behave in an unrestrained or unruly manner. ![]()
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