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Wolf.Roder@uc.edu The Oxford English Dictionary ascribes the first use to Henry M. Stanley in 1878 a. An enclosure or stockade used for herding beasts and for defensive purposes. b. A police post. c. A district commissioner's or magistrates' office; an administrative centre associated with such an office. 1878 STANLEY <http://dictionary.oed.com/help/bib/oed2-s4.html#stanley> Dark Cont. I. vi. 137 From the staked bomas..there rise to my hearing the bleating of young calves. 1898 Geogr. Jrnl. (R.G.S.) XI. 389, I went out on a sandspit into the lake and camped, cutting down the bush and placing it across the shore end of the bank so as to form a boma. 1903 STORDY in Jrnl. Soc. Arts 10 July 691/2 The construction of the boma employed fifty hands for the space of nine weeks. 1920 Blackw. Mag. Jan. 59/1 It [sc. the fort] was a typical Boma, built of bricks and plaster. 1961 New Scientist 24 Aug. 451 The innumerable trails that radiate from each cattle boma. 1964 C. WILLOCK <http://dictionary.oed.com/help/bib/oed2-w2.html#c-willock> Enormous Zoo iii. 49 A boma..that would have held a herd of a hundred or more zebra. 1967 L. KAYIRA Looming Shadow (1968) v. 60 He did not have the vaguest notion about the implications of the Boma and the law. 1969 N. CARR White Impala ii. 20 The hunter was awarded the 'ground' tusk.., while the other was to be handed in to the Boma. Ibid., Nowadays the word 'Boma'..is used to mean a Government administrative centre. But more particularly it means the District Commissioner's office and all the services that go with it dispensary, post office, agricultural officer's office, and so on.
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