gramadoelas, gamadoelas, plural noun

Forms:
Also gammadoelas, grammadoelas, and with initial capital.
Origin:
Afrikaans, IsiZulu, IsiXhosaShow more Afrikaans, ultimate etymology unknown; perhaps related to isiZulu and isiXhosa induli (plural amaduli) hillock, summit of a small hill.
colloquial
bundu sense 1. Also attributive, and transferred sense.
[1948 L.G. Green To River’s End 132Northwards stretches the road, ever northwards to the remote country that is so well described by the Afrikaans word ‘gramadoelas’.]
1950 H.C. Bosman in L. Abrahams Jurie Steyn’s Post Office (1971) 32She was a little girl staying in the lonely African wilds. Gramadoelas was the word that Aunt Susan used...It was loose talk about wilds and gramadoelas and tropics that gave the Marico a bad name, we said.
1970 R.M. Anderson Informant, Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha), Eastern CapeHe’s now living somewhere in the gamadoelas. (In the bush or veld.)
1978 Cape Times 1 Feb. 11In that harsh part of the world..they were stuck in the parched gamadoelas in the midday heat, kilometres from anywhere.
1979 Sunday Times 8 July 17The gramadoelas await those who do not collaborate in the process of removing race discrimination and recognising the claims of black, as well as white, to basic human rights.
1982 Flying Springbok Nov. 26Whoever first irreverently used the word gramadoelas to describe a panorama of wild and brutal desolation might have been standing, as we now are,..looking down over the canyon.
1989 Personality 10 Apr. 40The man from the gamadoelas of the world was suddenly rubbing shoulders with the likes of George Benson and Al Jarreau.
1990 A. Rice in Frontline Dec. 15Just one passing reference to the gramadoelas and this Londoner is there, back in the bundu.
1993 M. Oettle in Weekend Post 17 July (Leisure) 785c [stamp]..: ‘moon landscape’. The deeply eroded gramadoela country to the north of the Kuiseb River.
bundu sense 1. Also attributive, and transferred sense.
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19481993