Amok

[Mike Salovesh]

"James E. Clapp" wrote:
>
> Mike Salovesh wrote:
> >
> > I believe that "amok" came out of the Philippines, too.
>
> I'm sure you're thinking of Malay.  See OED2.

Actually, no, I wasn't.  I know the word appears in Captain Cook's
Voyages, and that it appeared in print (spelled as "amuck") as far back
as the 16th Century.  I also know that the ultimate source is usually
listed as Malay, and I have no quarrel with that.

What I meant is that the word has a separate tradition in U.S. military
speech.  I was under the impression that it gained general, rather than
literary, OED-level currency because of U.S. Army participation in the
Philippine Campaigns during and after the Spanish-American War of 1898.

Attribution of the word "amok" to involvement in the Philippines is a
piece of Army folklore, associated with the standard issue .45 caliber
automatic.
Old British sources (e.g., Captain Cook) attributed the condition to
such causes as opium overdose.  Army folklore used to explain "amok" as
the result of deliberate binding of the testicles in wet leather.  As
the leather dried, it would shrink.  The pain of the increasing pressure
was so great that wounds received from the enemy were ignored, making a
man in the amok state an extremely formidable opponent.  The .45 pistol
was said to have been  adopted as standard issue because no other hand
weapon could be depended on to stop a man running amok.  The .45's
impact knocked them off their feet.

That was the standard story during basic training at the Provost Marshal
General's School (i.e., Military Police School), U.S. Army, Camp (now
Fort) Gordon, Georgia in 1951/1952. (That's where and when I did my own
basic training.) Recruits were given these bits of folklore as they
began training in the use of the .45, the sidearm regarded as part of
the on-duty uniform of the Military Police.

It's only in this discussion that I've realized that the story might be
little more than a legend that I swallowed whole. . .  Still, in my
prejudiced way I want to believe that the story honestly reflects what
the Army thought was The Truth.  After all, it doesn't really contradict
the OED evidence.  It simply provides a channel for the word "amok"
becoming relevant to a part of the English-speaking world that had no
previous use for it.

I guess MP basic training planted lots of prejudices I still carry,
unaware that they're there.  Basic training is designed to do that.  In
my case, they succeeded despite the fact that I was (and I remain) a
dedicated pacifist; I
enlisted with a guarantee that I would serve in the Medical Corps.  (The
only way I could be guaranteed assignment to duty in the Medical Corps
was to be sent to basic training in some specialty school, any specialty
school.  MP school was a strange place for a pacifist -- but the Army
didn't know I was one. They didn't know I was a convinced Quaker,
either.   They only knew that I had enlisted for Medical Corps service.)

--  mike salovesh             <salovesh at niu.edu>        PEACE !!!