"to celebrate boisterously," 1900, from Mafficking, a nonce-verb formed punningly from Mafeking, British garrison town in South Africa whose relief on May 17, 1900, during the Boer War, was celebrated wildly in London. OED reports the word "confined to journalistic use." By now it might as well write, "confined to dictionaries." The place name (properly Mafikeng) is from Tswana and is said to mean "place of rocks," from mafika, plural of lefika "rock, cliff" + -eng "place of."
