Glossary of Common Terms.

Some of the terms I use or quote in this blog are, well, fairly unique to 19th century life in Australia. Here’s a rundown of some of the more general words. Further glossaries, including official terms and convict terms, will be included.

What was a Crimean Shirt? Or a new chum? Or a larrikin?

TERM	MEANING
Affiliation	Journalists used “affiliation” to mean an extramarital relationship, and usually a case for maintenance of the child born of one.
Billabong	A small body of water – also a waterhole. From an indigenous term.
Billy	An improvised kettle, usually made from a tin can, used to boil water when out in the bush. After about 1900, a nickname for traditional kettles.
Boiling down	In the days before refrigeration and supermarkets, boiling down establishments extracted tallow from animal carcases  by, well, boiling down. These places stank to high heaven, and polluted the neighbourhoods unfortunate enough to host them.
Bungwall	A type of fern that flourishes in swamps and wetlands. The roots can be eaten.
Bushranger	The 19th century Australian equivalent of a bandit, outlaw or highwayman. They relied on theft, marksmanship and horsemanship.
Calabash	Money orders traded about in lieu of cash in the days before every township had a bank or post office. Also called the order system. Open to all manner of fraud and abuse.
Cranky	If a person is called cranky today, it usually means that they’re grumpy. In the 1800s, it meant someone who seemed to be mentally ill.
Crimean Shirt	A wide shirt with a V-neck and no buttons, designed to be comfortable for outdoor work.
Damper	A rudimentary bread, made of flour and water and cooked on a campfire. Edible if it is warm, and you are starving.
Diggings	Term given to areas where mining and prospecting for gold takes place.
Duelling	Happened infrequently. Much more permanent, not to say risky, than a good public horsewhipping.
Duffing	Stealing of stock (cattle, sheep). Practically a side industry in some places.
Dulcinea	Term used to denote everything from a sweetheart to a mistress. Takes its origin from Don Quixote.
Dunwich	In common usage, Dunwich was shorthand for the Dunwich Benevolent Asylum, a place for the long-term infirm and the elderly.
Edenglassie	The name Sir Thomas Brisbane was inclined to give to the settlement (now Brisbane). Even he didn’t take the idea seriously.
Flash Gentry	Common or criminal classes attempting to pass themselves off as respectable people.
Fowl-house	Henhouse or chicken coop, an essential part of town living in those days. Even Sir George Bowen (well, his servants) had a fowlhouse.
Fowling Piece	A gun designed to shoot out small pellets to hunt birds. Is also an old term for a shotgun.
Free settlement	1842 – the Government allowed civilians to live and work in what was previously a convict settlement run under a form of martial law.
Gammon	A lie, deception, a fake. Derived from indigenous language.
Hawker	Also a pedlar. An itinerant salesperson who travelled about, selling home goods.
Horsewhipping	Happened a lot, generally in public, by and upon people who should know how to behave (ie Magistrates, Newspaper Editors).
Humpy	Also called a gunyah, a small temporary shelter (both words are from indigenous languages).
Idiot/Imbecile	These words were not used as insults, but descriptors for people who had mental or developmental disorders. People considered to be idiots spent their lives being shuffled from orphanages to lunatic asylums to benevolent homes. Nobody wanted to deal with them.
Idle and disorderly	At one point, pretty much the entire population. An idle and disorderly person did not have a job and liked a drink.
In liquor	Drunk. Not to the point of delirium tremens, but definitely feeling the effects of alcohol.
Jackaroo	A term still used today, a jackaroo is a farmhand or labourer, usually a young man in training for a life on the land. Its etymology is disputed, but the term may have originated in Queensland in the 19th century.
Kanakas	The term, which had its origins in the languages of Hawaii, came to mean a Pacific Island labourer (often kidnapped and virtually enslaved) who worked in the Queensland sugar industry. The term came to be used derisively.
Larrikin	A term in use from the late 1870s, it was used on juvenile criminals, local pranksters, and later, organised crime gangs. The term is now applied to irreverent, easy-going people.
Lunatic/Lunacy	A blanket term for anyone who appeared to be suffering from mental illness. A Lunatic Asylum was built at Woogaroo, near Brisbane, to house the mentally ill, who had previously been in part of the prison.
New chum	New arrival to the colony. Easily spotted in the street with their unsuitably heavy clothing, often enjoying their first taste of tropical fruit as they surveyed their new homeland.
Nobbler	A nobbler was a serving of spirits (usually rum) in a small glass. Too many could bring on the horrors, and a visit to the stone jug.
Old offender	Not necessarily an old person, just someone with a lengthy criminal record.
Orphan girls	When the Irish famine was at its worst, a scheme was created to bring Irish orphans to Australia to work as domestic servants. The orphan girls were aged 14 and upwards, and were often horribly exploited on arrival.
Phrenology	A pseudo-science of examining the shape of the skull (particularly “bumps”) to predict mental and character traits. It was debunked quite early, but phrenologists made quite a living touring about giving lectures and demonstrations to the gullible.
Poke borak	To poke borak at someone or something is to taunt or mock them or it.
Posts and Rails	The nickname given by early settlers to the undrinkable tea sold in the Commissary at Brisbane in the 1840s.
Proserpine	A prison ship or hulk, which was moored in Moreton Bay. Initially housed adult male criminals, it became the first Reformatory School for adolescent boys who had committed crimes.
Rabbiter	Also called a Rabbitoh, a person who hunts feral rabbits for sale as food or skins. Rabbits are not native to Australia, and reached plague numbers in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Rib	A wife – as in Adam’s Rib.
Rogue and vagabond	At one point, pretty much the entire population. It was also a legal term for a repeat offender and a convict who escaped custody and committed crimes.
Scold	Any woman with an opinion, it seemed. Particularly applied to ladies of a disputatious nature.
Servant	Not just a domestic servant. Under the Masters and Servants Act, a servant could be any hired labourer, mechanic or artisan. Increasingly, Chinese and Indian people were recruited into these agreements, which were weighted very heavily in favour of the employer. Attempting to leave one’s hired service was an offence punishable by imprisonment.
Skillion	An extension to a house, usually with a sloping roof, also called a “lean-to.” A skillion would often be a semi-detached kitchen, or extra room.
Slops	Convicts in colonial times received two full sets of clothing per year, and the fit was made loose to accommodate various shapes and sizes. They looked sloppy, hence slops clothing. It was a punishable offence to lose or destroy one’s slop clothing. Later, it came to mean cheap, manufactured clothing.
Sly grog	Alcohol sold illegally or on the sly – not by a licensed vendor. Often of poor quality. And of course, no revenue or duties were paid, making the government deeply unhappy.
Snob	Another name for a bootmaker.
South Sea Island Labour Trade	A system of hired labour using imported workers from the Pacific Islands. It was supposed to be voluntary and paid work. It often took the form of kidnapping and slavery.
Squatter	Today it means occupying a place illegally, without paying for its use. In the 19th century, large tracts of Crown Lands were occupied under licence, and the better-placed squatters became wealthy, and in time, rather posh. Nobody asked the traditional owners whether the land was really unoccupied.
St Helena	An island in Moreton Bay, down the river from Brisbane. It was used as a prison from the 1860s to the 1930s. It was considered to be very harsh, particularly in the early years, when the prisoners built the prison.
Station	A large farm or ranch. ‘Station’ sounded, well, fancier. If one had a station, one might become a grazier (not a rancher, please).
Stone Jug	The watch-house or lock-up. Police holding cells for drunks and fine defaulters
Swagman	Itinerant labourers, who carried their bedding and belongings in a swag or blanket roll on their backs as they went walking through the countryside looking for work.
The horrors	Delirium tremens.
The Windmill	A convict-built windmill built on a hill overlooking the penal colony at Brisbane Town in 1828-9. The sails never functioned very well, and a treadmill was installed for convicts to grind the corn and wheat.  Miraculously, it has survived and become a landmark.
Turnkey	Prison warder. The term was used until the late 19th century.
Unco guid	A Scottish term meaning narrow-minded, excessively religious. The equivalent of “wowser.”
Volunteers	Before becoming a nation in 1901, Australia was a collection of colonies, who did not have standing armies, there were volunteer rifle brigades to fill the gap left by the British armed forces. Levels of fighting and defensive ability varied.
Wallaby Track	The wallaby track was a term used to describe the travels of thousands of itinerant workers, who walked from town to town and stations, looking for odd jobs or to be hired on for a term of employment.