300-pound chimp runs amok in Kansas City

300-pound chimp runs amok in Kansas City

Quick, recruit that chimp for the Chiefs

I've always wanted to run "amok." Where did the expression originate? What does it even mean? OED says:

1. a.1.a adj. or n. A name for a frenzied Malay. (Found first in Pg. form amouco, amuco.)

... [c 1516 Barbosa transl. by Ld. Stanley (Hakl. Soc. 1866) 194 There are some of them [the Javanese] who‥go out into the streets, and kill as many persons as they meet‥These are called Amuco.]    1663 H. Cogan Pinto's Trav. I. 199 That all those which were able to bear arms should make themselves Amoucos, that is to say, men resolved either to dye, or vanquish.    Ibid. lxiv. 260 These same are ordinarily called Amucos.  

2.2 to run amok: to run viciously, mad, frenzied for blood. (Here amok was orig. adj.)

...1672 Marvell Reh. Transp. I. 59 Like a raging Indian‥he runs a mucke (as they cal it there) stabbing every man he meets.    1772 Cook Voy. (1790) I. 289 Jealousy of the women is the usual reason of these poor creatures running amock (or amuck).    1833 Southey Nav. Hist. Eng. I. 21 The same pitch of fury which the Malays excite in themselves by a deleterious drug, before they run amuck.    1858 Gen. Thompson Audi Alt. Part. i. xxii. 81 If the laborious ox‥was seen‥running amuck and sending man, woman and child to the hospital by dint of horn or hoof.    1879 L. Lindsay Mind in Lower An. 45 Thus the running amok (or amuck)‥is a peculiar form of human insanity.    1933 L. Ainsworth Confessions Planter in Malaya vii. 75 The reason for the headlong retreat was a Bengali who had run ‘amok’.‥ He had already killed two persons outright.    1972 Straits Times (Malaysian ed.) 4 May 9/8 A 27-year-old man ran amok with a meat-chopper and attacked a 62-year-old woman.    1980 S. Naipaul Black & White ii. ii. 133 ‘Here,’ an acquaintance said to me, ‘you either reach for the stars or you crack up and run amok with a chainsaw.’