Taung, noun

/taʊŋ/
Origin:
Sotho, SetswanaShow more Sotho and Setswana, ‘place of the lion’, tau lion + locative suffix -ng.
1. Plural unchanged, or Bataung [see ba-]. Usually in the plural : Collectively, the members of a Tswana clan of the Orange Free State (now Free State) and Lesotho. Also attributive. See also Tswana sense 2 a.
1905 W.H. Tooke in Flint & Gilchrist Science in S. Afr. 92The ba-Taung or ‘lion’ people..are now practically dispersed, a small remnant still remaining in Herschel...The ba-Tlapi or fish-folk under Mahura, Manloroane and his son Molala, are now in the Taung Reserve.
1909 G.Y. Lagden Basutos I. 20The Bataung were more given to pastoral habits than to fighting and were notorious for border-thieving, a propensity which led them and the Basuto in later years into serious trouble with other tribes as well as with the Boers who became their neighbours in the Orange Free State.
1951 W.S. Matsie in Drum Apr. 12Other tribes began to spring up in the Country either by breaking away from the older and larger tribes or by coming into the sheltered safety of Basutoland from the troubled world outside. Thus the Bafarutse, Bataung,..and the Makhoakhoa came about.
1970 J. Walton in Std Encycl. of Sn Afr. II. 194Certain tribes, such as the Tlokwa in the north, the Bataung between Mohale’s Hoek and Mafeteng..have continued to maintain their tribal identity.
1986 P. Maylam Hist. of Afr. People 56The Taung were another southern Sotho community to gain prominence during the difaqane. Their ruler, Moletsane, emerged as one of the most powerful Sotho leaders during the early 1820s...In the early years of the difaqane the Taung moved across the Vaal and became engaged in attacks on various Tswana chiefdoms, notably the Seleka-Rolong.
2. Also Taungs. [The name of a town.] Usually attributive, especially in the phrases Taung baby, Taung child, Taung skull, etc., designating the remains of a fossil hominid discovered at Taung in the northern Cape Province in 1924.
1925 Nature 28 Mar. 469A certain amount of criticism has been levelled at Prof. Dart’s nomenclature of the Taungs skull. It is generally felt that the name Australopithecus is an unpleasing hybrid as well as etymologically incorrect.
1931 A. Keith New Discoveries Antiquity Man 61How does the brain development of the Taungs skull fit into the human scheme of growth?
1957 K.P. Oakley in Third Pan-African Congress on Prehistory 156The Taung skull, generally regarded as the oldest of the known Australopithecines, belongs..to a dry period following a pluvial phase.
1966 F.C. Howell Early Man 49The Taung baby is hominoid rather than ape-like..Its jaws are shorter and more lightly made than those of an ape, and its skull lacks the characteristic bony ridges that denote large muscles.
1974 E. Prov. Herald 8 Aug. 10Boskop man was alive and well and living in southern Africa more than 20 000 years ago but was a youngster when compared..in particular the Taung child discovered in 1924.
1989 Reader’s Digest Illust. Hist. of S. Afr. 15The Taung baby, so named because the state of development of its teeth revealed that it had died at the age of three or four years, had walked upright, almost like man.
1990 TV1, 20 July (Origins)What did surprise Dart was the reaction of the scientific community to his claim that Taung was an ancestor.
Plural unchanged, or Bataung [see ba-]. Usually in the plural :Collectively, the members of a Tswana clan of the Orange Free State (now Free State) and Lesotho. Also attributive.
Also Taungs. Usually attributive, especially in the phrases Taung baby, Taung child, Taung skull, etc.,designating the remains of a fossil hominid discovered at Taung in the northern Cape Province in 1924.
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Sesotho and Sesotho sa Leboa
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tata, nounn.tausa, nounn.
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