Meithein.
/ˈmeɪteɪ/, U.S. /ˈmeɪˌteɪ/ 1. A member of a people inhabiting the state of Manipur in Assam, north-east India; (more generally) a Manipuri.
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1798 F. Buchanan in Asiatick Researches 5 230 The next language..is that of the people who call themselves Moitay... By the people of Bengal they are called Muggaloos.
1872 E. T. Dalton Descr. Ethnol. Bengal i. vii. 49 The Moirang tribe came from the south,..and the Meithei and Luang from the north-west.
1904 G. A. Grierson Ling. Surv. India III. iii. 20 The original residence of the Meithei chiefs is made in Naga fashion.
1957 Encycl. Brit. XV. 219/1 Head-hunting was practised until Hinduism became general, before which the Meithei were meat-eaters and buried their dead.
1998 Hindustan Times (Electronic ed.) 18 Oct. The injured include seven Naga villagers (five women), two Kuki bus passengers and a Meitei, officials said.
2. The Tibeto-Burman language of the Meithei; Manipuri.
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1798 F. Buchanan in Asiatick Researches 5 230 (table) English. Moitay.
1904 G. A. Grierson Ling. Surv. India III. iii. 20 Meithei, the chief language of Manipur, differs from the other Kuki-Chin languages in so many points that it must be classed as a separate sub-group.
1954 M. A. Pei & F. Gaynor Dict. Linguistics 116 Kuki-Chin, a group of dialects (Lai, Lushei, Meithei, Tashon, etc.), constituting a subdivision of the Arakan-Burmese branch of the Tibeto-Burmese sub-family of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages.
1975 K. Katzner Langs. of World i. 24 Among the most important [Tibeto-Burman languages] are..Meithei and Lushei, spoken in Assam, India.
1996 World Almanac & Bk. Facts 1997 (Electronic ed.) Total number of speakers (native plus nonnative) of languages spoken by at least 1 million speakers... Meithei (NE India; Bangladesh) 1.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, June 2001; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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