mũtũng'ũ

Kikuyu

Etymology

Hinde (1904) records muthungu as an equivalent of English small-pox in “Jogowini dialect” of Kikuyu, listing also “Ulu dialect” (spoken then from Machakos to coastal area) of Kamba nthungu as its equivalent.[1]

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /mòtòŋóꜜ/
As for Tonal Class, Armstrong (1940) classifies this term into mbori class which includes mbũri, ikinya (pl. makinya), itimũ, kĩhaato, maguta, mbembe, mũgeka, mũrata, nyaga, ũhoro, riitho, riũa, rũrĩmĩ, Kamau (“man's name”), etc.[2] Benson (1964) classifies this term into Class 3 with a disyllabic stem, together with kĩhaato, mbembe, kiugo, and so on.

Noun

mũtũng'ũ class 3 (plural mĩtũng'ũ)

  1. small-pox[3][4][5]

Hypernyms

References
  1. Hinde, Hildegarde (1904). Vocabularies of the Kamba and Kikuyu languages of East Africa, pp. 54–55. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  2. Armstrong, Lilias E. (1940). The Phonetic and Tonal Structure of Kikuyu. Rep. 1967. (Also in 2018 by Routledge).
  3. Barlow, A. Ruffell (1960). Studies in Kikuyu Grammar and Idiom, p. 95.
  4. “mũtũng'ũ” in Benson, T.G. (1964). Kikuyu-English dictionary, p. 480. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  5. Leakey, L. S. B. (1977). The Southern Kikuyu before 1903, v. II, pp. 888–905. →ISBN
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