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

1890. Rolf Boldrewood, `Colonial Reformer,' c. xvii. p. 211:

"I sat . . . watching the shadows of the gydya trees lengthen, ah! so slowly."

1890. C. Lumholtz, `Among Cannibals,' p. 37:

"Kind of scrub, called by the colonists gydya-scrub, which manifests itself even at a distance by a very characteristic, but not agreeable odour, being especially pungent after rain."

1896. Baldwin Spencer, `Home Expedition in Central Australia,' Narrative, p. 22:

"We camped beside a water-pool on the Adminga Creek, which is bordered for the main part by a belt of the stinking acacia, or giddea (<i>A. homalophylla</i>). When the branches are freshly cut it well deserves the former name, as they have a most objectionable smell."

<hw>Gill-bird</hw>, <i>n.</i> an occasional name for the <i>Wattle-bird</i> (q.v.).

1896. `Menu' for October 15:

"Gill-bird on Toast."

<hw>Gin</hw>, <i>n.</i> a native word for an aboriginal woman, and used, though rarely, even for a female kangaroo. See quotation 1833. The form <i>gun</i> (see quotation 1865) looks as if it had been altered to meet <i>gunae</i>, and of course generate is not derived from <i>gunae</i>, though it may be a distant relative. In `Collins's Vocabulary' occurs "din, a woman." If such a phonetic spelling as <i>djin</i> had been adopted, as it well might have been, to express the native sound, where would the <i>gunae</i> theory have been?