Entry:mokinde
Tovasala
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mokinde ns, mokindo m, mokinda f, mokindous(e/o/a) du, mokindes/mokind(o/a)s pl 1 / 1a i b [/mo.kɪnd/; mo•kinde (2 syll.)] [Kilivila mokitaThe Mavens' Word of the Day (Words@Random) (20/12/1999). See usage notes below.]
While the source language was never stated by Hunt, research by the staff of Random House in December 1999 indicated:
Mokita, with or without the capital letter, does in fact mean 'the truth that everyone knows but no one talks about'. It implies unspoken consent by a group.
I [Wendalyn] suspect you found the site posted by someone called Andreas who gives the 'that no one admits' spin to the definition, and suggests that the word be added to the English language. It seems that it is indeed being picked up, mostly in political or education theory contexts, rather than in the skeleton-in-the-family context one would think it was perfect for.
Papua New Guinea is actually home to a fifth of the world's languages, and so it's misleading to say that mokita is simply a 'New Guinean' word. From what I can dig up, it comes from the Kilivila language spoken on Kiriwina, the largest of the Trobriand Islands, part of Papua New Guinea. I also looked up the American Scientist article, and it seems to me that Hunt is using the term correctly, referring to "facts that were well known to the scientific community, but perhaps best not discussed in public."
This discussion, whose link now redirects to Penguin Random House's home page, was referenced by Jed Hartman's Neology in February 2006. According to Hartman, "It's not clear to me whether it's used to refer to ordinary things that are so obvious that nobody bothers talking about them, or only things that are too sensitive to discuss."
Mokita, as attested in Senft (1986), only translates variously to "really", "true", and "right"/"correct". These senses respectively correspond to Tovasala's reshan/-iruj (depending on the context), voardi, and duinzi.