mia mia

English

Alternative forms

• mia-mia

Etymology

Borrowed from Kurnai mai-mai or Wathaurong [Term?].

Noun

mia mia (plural mia mias)

1. (Australia) An aboriginal shelter made from bark, a gunya.
   • 1913, William Henry Fitchett, The New World of the South: Australia in the Making, 2006 Elibron Classics, page 391,

     On the point of this “spear” they erected what looked like a mia-mia, a hut made of branches by the blacks ; across the road opposite to it the trunk of a tree was dragged, leaving a narrow track along which the escort must defile.

   • 1914, Baldwin Spencer, Native Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia, Cambridge University Press, published 2010, page 109:

     Decorated with this mop of hair and the chaplet, the girl was led by her father to the mia-mia and put inside this with the four boys.

   • 1932, W. Ramsay Smith, “The Flood and its Results”, in Myths and Legends of the Australian Aborigines, Dover, published 2003, page 160:

     Exhausted, he threw himself down at the door of the mia-mia of the emu and lay there as if dead.

   • 1944, H. Lorna Bingham, Tuckonie's Warrior Friend, page 15, column 2:

     "Dan is creeping through the bushes on the other side of the mia-mia."

Usage notes

• The word gunya is more common in some parts of Australia.
• The term "mia mia" is already a plural in the local language (where plurality is indicated by repeating the word).

Synonyms

• gunya
• humpy
• wurly

Anagrams

• amimia