Shaggy Dogs & Black Sheep by Albert Jack

October 16th 2005


To Run Amock

To Run Amock, or Run Amuck (depending upon your preference), means to be in a wild, frenzied state and out of control. Such behaviour can now be witnessed in most English high streets of a weekend evening. Although I doubt any of those involved would know the expression derives from the Malaysian word amoq which, literally translated, describes the behaviour of tribesmen who, under the influence of opium, would become wild, rampaging mobs attacking anybody in their path. The phrase became well known in England during the 17th century when the great travellers-turned-writers of the day would show off their knowledge of far-away cultures by including such terms in their prose and poetry. Three hundred years later, the phrase was firmly established in the West. It appears, for instance, in P. G. Wodehouse's Uncle Fred in Springtime (1939): 'So that when the policeman arrived and found me running amuck with an assegai, apparently without provocation, it was rather difficult to convince him that I wasn't drunk.' I doubt Wodehouse was high on opium either when he wrote this. (An assegai is a lance or javelin, by the way.)