It may be thought by some precisians that all Australasian English is a corruption of the language. So too is Anglo-Indian, and, <i>pace</i> Mr. Brander Matthews, there are such things as Americanisms, which were not part of the Elizabethan heritage, though it is perfectly true that many of the American phrases most railed at are pure old English, preserved in the States, though obsolete in Modern England; for the Americans, as Lowell says, "could not take with them any better language than that of Shakspeare." When we hear railing at slang phrases, at Americanisms, some of which are admirably expressive, at various flowers of colonial speech, and at words woven into the texture of our speech by those who live far away from London and from Oxford, and who on the outskirts of the British Empire are brought into contact with new natural objects that need new names, we may think for our comfort on the undoubted fact that the noble and dignified language of the poets, authors and preachers, grouped around Lewis XIV., sprang from debased Latin. For it was not the classical Latin that is the origin of French, but the language of the soldiers and the camp-followers who talked slang and picked words up from every quarter. English has certainly a richer vocabulary, a finer variety of words to express delicate distinctions of meaning, than any language that is or that ever was spoken: and this is because it has always been hospitable in the reception of new words. It is too late a day to close the doors against new words. This <i>Austral English Dictionary</i> merely catalogues and records those which at certain doors have already come in.
V. CLASSIFICATION OF THE WORDS.
The Dictionary thus includes the following classes of Words,
Phrases and Usages; viz.—
(1) Old English names of Natural Objects—Birds, Fishes, Animals, Trees, Plants, etc.—applied (in the first instance by the early settlers) either to new Australian species of such objects, or to new objects bearing a real or fancied resemblance to them—as <i>Robin, Magpie, Herring, Cod, Cat, Bear, Oak, Beech, Pine, Cedar, Cherry, Spinach, Hops, Pea, Rose</i>.
(2) English names of objects applied in Australia to others quite different-as <i>Wattle</i>, a hurdle, applied as the name of the tree <i>Wattle</i>, from whose twigs the hurdle was most readily made; <i>Jackass</i>, an animal, used as the name for the bird <i>Jackass</i>; <i>Cockatoo</i>, a birdname, applied to a small farmer.
(3) Aboriginal Australian and Maori words which have been incorporated unchanged in the language, and which still denote the original object—as <i>Kangaroo, Wombat, Boomerang, Whare, Pa, Kauri</i>.
(4) Aboriginal Australian and Maori words which have been similarly adopted, and which have also had their original meaning extended and applied to other things—as <i>Bunyip, Corrobbery, Warrigal</i>.
(5) Anglicised corruptions of such words—as <i>Copper-Maori, Go-ashore, Cock-a-bully, Paddy-melon, Pudding-ball, Tooky-took</i>.
(6) Fanciful, picturesque, or humorous names given to new Australasian Natural Objects—as <i>Forty-spot, Lyre-bird, Parson-bird, and Coach-whip</i> (birds); <i>Wait-a-while</i> (a tangled thicket); <i>Thousand-jacket, Jimmy Low, Jimmy Donnelly, and Roger Gough</i> (trees); <i>Axe-breaker, Cheese-wood, and Raspberry Jam</i> (timbers); <i>Trumpeter, Schnapper and Sergeant Baker</i> (fishes); <i>Umbrella-grass</i> and <i>Spaniard</i> (native plants), and so on.
(7) Words and phrases of quite new coinage, or arising from quite new objects or orders of things—as <i>Larrikin, Swagman, Billy, Free-selector, Boundary-rider, Black-tracker, Back-blocks, Clear-skin, Dummyism, Bushed.</i>
(8) Scientific names arising exclusively from Australasian necessities, chiefly to denote or describe new Natural Orders, Genera, or Species confined or chiefly appertaining to Australia—as <i>Monotreme, Petrogale, Clianthus, Ephthianura, Dinornis, Eucalypt, Boronia, Ornithorhynchus, Banksia</i>.
(9) Slang (of which the element is comparatively small)—as <i>Deepsinker, Duck-shoving, Hoot, Slushy, Boss-cockie, On-the-Wallaby</i>.
VI. QUOTATIONS.
With certain exceptions, this Dictionary is built up, as a Dictionary should be, on quotations, and these are very copious. It may even be thought that their number is too large. It is certainly larger, and in some places the quotations themselves are much longer, than could ever be expected in a general Dictionary of the English Language. This copiousness is, however, the advantage of a special Dictionary. The intention of the quotations is to furnish evidence that a word is used as an English word; and many times the quotation itself furnishes a satisfactory explanation of the meaning. I hope, however, I shall not be held responsible for all the statements in the quotations, even where attention is not drawn to their incorrectness. Sundry Australasian uses of words are given in other dictionaries, as, for instance, in the parts already issued of the <i>Oxford English Dictionary</i> and in <i>The Century</i>, but the space that can be allotted to them in such works is of necessity too small for full explanation. Efforts have been made to select such quotations as should in themselves be interesting, picturesque, and illustrative. In a few cases they may even be humorous.
Moreover, the endeavour has been constant to obtain quotations from all parts of the Australasian Colonies—from books that describe different parts of Australasia, and from newspapers published far and wide. I am conscious that in the latter division Melbourne papers predominate, but this has been due to the accident that living in Melbourne I see more of the Melbourne papers, whilst my friends have sent me more quotations from books and fewer from newspapers.
The quotations, however, are not all explanatory. Many times a quotation is given merely to mark the use of a word at a particular epoch. Quotations are all carefully dated and arranged in their historical order, and thus the exact chronological development of a word has been indicated. The practice of the `O.E.D.' has been followed in this respect and in the matter of quotations generally, though as a rule the titles of books quoted have been more fully expressed here than in that Dictionary. Early quotations have been sought with care, and a very respectable antiquity, about a century, has been thus found for some Australasian words. As far as possible, the spelling, the stops, the capitals, and the italics of the original have been preserved. The result is often a rich variety of spelling the same word in consecutive extracts.
The last decade has been a very active time in Australian science. A great deal of system has been brought into its study, and much rearrangement of classification has followed as the result. Both among birds and plants new species have been distinguished and named: and there has been not a little change in nomenclature. This Dictionary, it must be remembered, is chiefly concerned with vernacular names, but for proper identification, wherever possible, the scientific name is added. In some cases, where there has been