First recorded in 1835–45; from Ganay or Kurnai (Australian Aboriginal languages spoken in Gippsland, Victoria), recorded as mai-mai “camp, hut”
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
On again next morning to another of the native camps; but, finding it empty, the wanderers took possession of the best mia-mia, and Wills and King were sent out to collect nardoo.
From The Red True Story Book by Ford, H. J. (Henry Justice)
Here they found King sitting alone in the mia-mia the natives had made for him, wasted and worn to a shadow, almost imbecile from the terrible hardships he had suffered.
From The Red True Story Book by Ford, H. J. (Henry Justice)
I am so weak as to be incapable of crawling out of the mia-mia.
From Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia by Wills, William John
But the devil-devil came and sat down by King Jimmie's side one night, so he, too, moved out across the Old Man border, and the mia-mia rotted into the ground and the grass grew there.
From Over the Sliprails by Lawson, Henry
King had already buried the rest of the field-books near the mia-mia.
From The Red True Story Book by Ford, H. J. (Henry Justice)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
