English

Alternative forms

• mia-mia

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, 2010, Cambridge University Press, 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, Myths and Legends of the Australian Aborigines, 2003, Dover, page 160,

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

Usage notes

The word gunya is far more common.

Synonyms

• gunya
• humpy

References

1. ↑ "mia-mia" in Random House Dictionary. Random House, Inc, 2015.