noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   In China, someone who looks after horses in a stable; a groom.

   "The mafoos held their charges miserably, as if sick with nerves."

Synonyms

All synonyms

groom

Example

More examples

"The mafoos held their charges miserably, as if sick with nerves."

Etymology

From Mandarin 馬伕 /马伕 (mǎfū), from 馬 /马 (mǎ, “horse”) + 伕 (fū, “servant, labourer”).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.