Austral English / A dictionary of Australasian words, phrases and usages with those aboriginal-Australian and Maori words which have become incorporated in the language, and the commoner scientific words that have had their origin in Australasia

by Edward Ellis Morris

sp. a species,

spp. various species.

A square bracket [ ] shows an addition to a quotation by way of comment.

O.E.D. "Oxford English Dictionary," often formerly quoted
as "N.E.D." or "New English Dictionary."

AUSTRALASIAN DICTIONARY

A

<hw>Absentee</hw>, <i>n</i>. euphemistic term for a convict. The word has disappeared with the need for it.

1837. Jas. Mudie, `Felonry of New South Wales,' p. vii.:

"The ludicrous and affected philanthropy of the present Governor of the Colony, in advertising runaway convicts under the soft and gentle name of <i>absentees</i>, is really unaccountable, unless we suppose it possible that his Excellency as a native of Ireland, and as having a well-grounded Hibernian antipathy to his absentee countrymen, uses the term as one expressive both of the criminality of the absentee and of his own abhorrence of the crime."

<hw>Acacia</hw>, <i>n</i>. and <i>adj</i>. a genus of shrubs or trees, <i>N.O. Leguminosae</i>. The Australian species often form thickets or scrubs, and are much used for hedges. The species are very numerous, and are called provincially by various names, e.g. "Wattle," "Mulga," "Giddea," and "Sally," an Anglicized form of the aboriginal name <i>Sallee</i> (q.v.). The tree peculiar to Tasmania, <i>Acacia riceana</i>, Hensl., (i>N.O. Leguminosae</i>, is there called the <i>Drooping Acacia</i>.