I’m fascinated with language, especially the origins of phrases we use all the time. I haven’t offered you one for awhile, so today I give you “running amok” (wild behavior).
This actually began as a medical term in the 18th and 19th centuries to describe a mental condition that made Malaysian tribesmen, who were usually within the normal bounds of behavior, to start killing and brutalizing people randomly. “Amok” is taken from “Amuco,” violent Javanese and Maylay warriors who caught the morbid fascination of Westerners. The term was popularized by the explorer Capt. James Cook, who declared that “to run amok is to … sally forth from the house, kill the person or persons supposed to have injured the Amock, and any other person that attempts to impede his passage.” From there it made its way into psychiatric manuals, where it can still be found today as a medical condition.