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- Dictionaryamah/ˈɑːmə/
noun
- 1. a nursemaid or maid in East Asia or India.
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Amah is a Portuguese word for a wet nurse, especially in eastern Asia. Learn more about its origin, usage, and synonyms from Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
Amah definition: a baby's nurse, especially a wet nurse.. See examples of AMAH used in a sentence.
- Daughters of The Delta
- An Independent Streak
- Becoming An Amah
- A Lifetime of Labour and Love
- End of An Era
Compared with other parts of China where the birth of a girl would be greeted with dismay – female infanticide was tragically common then – women in the Pearl River Delta were valued by their families for their ability to contribute to the household income.5 In the early 1900s, the Pearl River Delta was a major centre for silk production, especiall...
Writing in the 1930s, American journalist Agnes Smedley observed that “thousands of peasant homes depend for a large part of their livelihood upon the modest earnings of a wife or daughter and this important productive role played by women has struck a serious blow at the old idea of the inferiority of women”. She further noted that the silk worker...
The decline of the silk industry in the 1930s prompted thousands of Cantonese women to leave the Pearl River Delta in search of employment away from home. Meanwhile, as a result of the Great Depression, immigration restrictions were enforced to control the supply of Chinese male labour in Singapore and Malaya. The Aliens Ordinance 1933 enabled the ...
Many amahs started out working for less affluent households as an “all-purpose servant”, or yat keok tek (in Cantonese, literally “one-leg-kick”), who managed all domestic tasks single-handedly. More well-to-do families could afford to hire a servant for each area of domestic activity – cooking, cleaning, childcare and general housekeeping – which ...
Amahs have become a symbol of a bygone era, much like the Samsui women of yesteryear. In search of a better life, these former silk workers left their families and came to Singapore and Malaya in the 1930s. By the 1970s, amahshad become a vanishing breed as they retired from service or returned to China to live out their twilight years. At the same...
An amah (Portuguese: ama, German: Amme, Medieval Latin: amma, simplified Chinese: 阿妈; traditional Chinese: 阿 媽; pinyin: ā mā; Wade–Giles: a¹ ma¹) or ayah (Portuguese: aia, Latin: avia, Tagalog: yaya) is a girl or woman employed by a family to clean, look after children, and perform other domestic tasks.
Amah is a noun that means a female servant, especially a nurse or a wet nurse, in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Find out the origin, pronunciation, and related words of amah from various dictionaries and sources.
Definition of amah noun in Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Meaning, pronunciation, picture, example sentences, grammar, usage notes, synonyms and more.
amah in British English. (ˈɑːmə , ˈæmə ) noun. (in India and East Asia, esp formerly) a nurse or maidservant, esp one of Chinese origin. Compare ayah. Collins English Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers. Word origin. C19: from Portuguese ama nurse, wet nurse.
