EDITORIALAs long ago as 1965 the editors of the originalPenguin English Dictionary were expressing theview that ‘One can no longer attempt toimpose nationalistic divisions on a languagewhose divergent branches are in suchfrequent and intimate contact’. Certainly thefrequency and intimacy of such contact haveonly intensified in the intervening decades.The infiltration of North American usage intoother English varieties has become more andmore marked, and in this part of the worldAustralian influence on NZE is a continuingphenomenon. (Should I have been surprisedto overhear a Kiwi-accented airline passengertalking about his doona recently? Or to beconfronted with ‘Enrolment rorts ruled out’as headline in my morning paper?)And yet regional and national distinctivenessin words and meanings remains strong, muchof it inherently resistant to levelling and cross-fertilising processes because of uniqueapplication to a particular English-speakingenvironment. The NZDC and our NewZealand dictionaries would have little reasonto exist if this were not so. Moreover, suchconvergence of English vocabularies as isoccurring seems to be more than counteredby additional divergence as social andinstitutional changes require and generate yetmore locally specific coinages.In different ways the two main articles in thisissue tap into rich seams of robustly distinctiveNew Zealand usage of the kind that couldeasily escape the superficial inquiry. DianneBardsley presents a generous and colourfulselection of material collected in her currentdelvings into the (presently under-recorded)rural lexicon, and the editor (excusably, onehopes) is doggedly parochial in his quest for aparticular set of provincialisms. As well readerswill find here our regular Director’s offering,details of the Centre’snew website, and notleast a young person’sinteresting take ona sometimes gaffe-producing Kiwiism.Tony DeversonEditor, NZWordsAssociate Director, NZDC

An initial study of the rural NZ Englishlexicon could easily reinforce perceptions ofthe ‘Kiwi’ as a resourceful DIY improviser andinitiator who has evolved independentapproaches to language and its use, as well asto farming practice. Since 1850 New Zealandfarmers have adapted existing terms andcoined words in the fields of animalhusbandry, plant and soil science, studbreeding, dog trialling, and every other aspectof farming life. Borrowings from Maorior from the ‘homeland’ have beencompounded, converted, and collocated, andwith a high level of specificity, multi-lexicalunits have been a significant feature.Although words have been generated andadapted with what could be described a liberaland innovative agrarian air, such processes areperhaps merely typical of frontier societiesthroughout the English-speaking world. Moresignificant, perhaps, is that New Zealandruralspeak has been generated by a very smallpopulation in quite heterogeneousconditions.

Naturally, the rural lexicon shows closeassociation with the physical environment:sunny or clean faces, guts, river flats, chutesand shingle-slides, pakihis, wiwis, monkeyscrub, gumlands, tomos, razorbacks, andnor’west arches have specific rural applicationand significance. In the city, a double-decker ispossibly an ice cream or a bus; in the country,it is a stock truck with two decks, or a sheepwith two seasons’ growth of wool. In the urbanworld, police and delivery vans do their beats,whereas out on the hills musterers andshepherds have beats with a different purpose,and camp weeds have a life of their own. Afinisher in a rural sense can be a fattenerfarmer or a crop of lucerne. Making a breakand dozing off are constructive pasturemanagement activities on farms.

There are several specialist rural contexts,including the mustering lexicon (discussedmore fully below), the language of the dogtrials, of saleyards, of the woolshed, of thecowshed, of stock stud breeding, and ofhunting, all of which show considerablevariation, synonymy, and local colloquialism.Some of the numerous phrasal verbs, verbalnouns, acronyms, eponyms, and theapplication of trade names are included in thediscussion here. Although specificity is afeature, many lexemes such as the borrowingskonaki and pikau have been applied looselywith a range of meanings. Rural New ZealandEnglish is a fascinating field of study,reflecting quite distinct stages and foci in ouragricultural and pastoral development.

CAN A BREAK BE BROKEN?Unit in ruralspeak might be a farm, a farmimplement, or a stock transporter. Woolliesmight be sheep in general or unshorn sheepor, more specifically, those that have missed atleast one season’s shearing. Strip refers to theairstrip, the dog dosing strip or what one doesbefore putting the cups on. Land is consideredbroken when it is steep and contains gulliesand guts. It is broken when it has been ‘tamed’from native covering to pasture. It is alsodescribed as unbroken in both senses. Landcan be broken up (subdivided) as well as

broken in. Bush can be broken with pakihisbut also broken in to serve as bush farms. Abreak should be back-fenced, and stock caneasily break while being mobbed. For soilconservation purposes, a break may have to beplanted. A break may be punished with aflogger. The boy will have to go and move thebreak after milking. Wool from poorlynourished sheep can contain a localisedweakness, a break or two. A break can occur ina sheep’s skin if it has been on rough pasture.

Clean hills are different from clean sheepcamps; clean sheep are quite different fromcleanskin cattle. Open country, with severalmeanings, can also be broken. Hooks arespurs on a musterer’s boots, they are tusks onwild pigs, and they are enclosures on dog-trialcourses. A shepherd has to be careful not tocut in too quickly while mobbing or taking acut; lambs will cut when they are not supposedto be cut out; the shed is cut out; and theshearing is cut out at cut-out time. If cut-out’searly, one sits down and waits for the brownboots to arrive with the cheque book. Oneruns a dog at the dog-trials, has run cattle thatone might occasionally run on a run-off(where one has to watch the run-off afterrain), achieves a runout at the trials, and canhave a run-out crop or paddock. Sheep can berun in, run through or run out by the whareboys while the boss runs into town in the ute.

On a farm it is common to refer not ingeneral terms to ‘the tractor’, the sheep, oreven the woolshed as a townie might. It’sspecifically the Fergie or the steel-wheel, thetwo-tooths or the culls, the shed, the boards,or the battens. Other examples of specificityinclude the different types of muster: weaningmuster, a delivery muster, an autumn muster,a crutching muster, a dipping muster, ahelimuster.

Cobalt deficiency disease is knownvariously as bush sickness, bush disease, theskinnies, Hope disease, Mairoa dopiness,Tauranga sickness/disease, or Morton MainsDisease. Wild pigs can be bush pigs, maoripigs, bush pork, Captain Cookers, scofflers,scufflers, scoofters or scooflers, operasingers, porkers, tuskers, taraianas, Irishmerinos, grunters, razorbacks or bristle-backs.

POSSESSION ISNINE-TENTHS . . .

An early borrowing from the Maori was pikau,and this survival term has been applied toseveral objects. Makeshift backpacks wereknown as pikaus, split sacks were pikaus, andsaddlebags were pikaus in rural New ZealandEnglish. A konaki was any sledge pulled bybullock or horse, but in some areas wasspecifically one with runners and rear wheels,used for hill country work. Tutu is an earlyborrowing adapted according to the region inwhich it has been used. Both in the North andthe South Islands stock became tutu-ed ortuted, but in the South, where vegetation forfuel was in short supply, rural residents wenttutu-ing for the plant roots that burned well.In other parts, tutu-ing consisted of cutting thepoisonous plants and leaving the roots to rot.Mokihi was corrupted to moggy or a moki, andit was often made of korade (korari). Tawhini,bidibid(i), and matagouri are well-known

NZWORDS

AUGUST 2001NUMBER 5

P U B L I S H E D A N N U A L LY

On First Looking IntoKiwi Ruralspeak . . .

Dianne Bardsley

THE NEW ZEALAND DICTIONARY CENTRE

A joint project between VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OFWELLINGTON and OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

1

PAGE 2 NZWORDS AUGUST 2001

corruptions surviving in the rural lexicon.Collocations of Maori botanical lexemesinclude manuka blight, old man manuka, rimudropper, and akeake monkey, while whareappears to have the greatest range ofmeanings and collocations in the rural world(whare boy, sod whare, back whare, whareboss, etc.)

Pakihi is a borrowing that has undergoneconsiderable adaptation. Originally used byrural-dwellers to mean a clearing in the bush,it is specifically used as open pakihi, closedpakihi, and blind pakihi, and corrupted asparkee. Since then it has been used todescribe large areas of swampy ground in theWest Coast and Golden Bay areas. Pakihilands, the pakihi soils, the pakihi bogs, pakihifern, pakihi country, pakihi swamp, andpakihi rushes are some collocations. NewZealand cultivars of wheat, prairie grass,lucerne, clover, and ryegrass, such as nui,ruanui, rongotea, huia, roa, matua, wana,ariki, takahe, tama, etc., are widely known andused. A sentence like ‘We bought a 1900-litreportable trough for the tama’ can beperplexing for a townie reader of thenewspaper farming page. Poroporo becamewidely used in the 1970s and 1980s when itwas grown as a commercial crop.

BEING MATEYSheep can be shed-stained, woolblind, early-weaned, gate-shy, well-woolled, long-woolled,tight-skinned, clean-grazing, plain-bodied,open-faced, low-set, tough-shearing animals,while dogs can be whip-shy, chain-crazed, bike-happy, trial-weary, trial-happy, or gun-shy. Asuccessful shepherd-general needs to be welldogged . . . and ‘Few could have handled thehorsebacking that went on with a job onSt James’. Cattle are put on paddock-cleaning duties on fern-land, which involvesclearing land of fern and other second-growth and weeds. Single-sire pen-matinghas certain advantages over paddock-mating. Plenty of boulder-hopping and riverwork is required up near the creekhead.One should mob-stock with sheep and cattlerather than patch-graze. We read that ‘asatisfactory dairy farm can be developedon poor gumland scrublands’. Paddockscan be overhayed, and if the picker comeslate, a fair proportion of lambs will beoverfat, for which there is a scale ofoverfatness. Merinos can outclip theCorriedales by several kilos of wool, andback-blockers do not often godowncountry.

A BUILDINGBY ANY OTHER NAME

Whare boys lived in the whare or singleshepherds’ quarters with a whare boss, rehabfarmers lived in Semple’s Temples, andhomesteaders lived in the big house at thefrontstation. Outstations or backstationsmight consist of a simple single construction(an out-hut, an out-whare, a back whare, or amusterer’s hut) or be part of a complex offarm buildings far from the main homestead.Outstations have occasionally been known asaccommodation houses, but some musterersand hunters set up fly-camps, galley-sides, orpigs-nests. Stud stations are also located farfrom the main homestead complex. Themarried man’s house, the farm cottage, theshearer’s whare and shearers’ quarters,bunkhouse, cookshop or cookhouse, thekilling shed or killing house, the boiling-downplant, the walk-in meatsafe, and theimplement shed are all located on thehomestead block. The cowman-gardenerworks in the dairy by the house when he

separates the milk, and the station schoolmight have its own saddle room.

DOING A DOG JOBHigh country shepherds and musterers donot call themselves shepherds and musterers;they are dog men, hillmen, tussock-jumpers,scree-scramblers, lizards, dog-wallopers,sandy-hookers, or mutton-punchers, and whilethey are mustering they are doing a dog job,taking up the burnt chops, or bringing in thewool. They could well be members of a flyinggang, a hill gang, a mountain gang, or thebenzine boys. A hillman knows when it is timeto go on a dog job — he sniffs the nor-west(wants to go mustering). Over the years hill-men have worn not boots but Bill Masseys,O’Briens, or Pannells (or Pannels). A self-respecting scree-scrambler might dag histrousers before he embarks on a dog job.Musterers do not walk — they hoof it or ridetheir hobnails, or even get into marrowbonecountry, and when on horseback they couldbe riding pigskin or sitting on their Ngatis.

If the all-rounder is looking tired, theymight have a bark-up or send down a Nelsonhuntaway. While they are on the hill, tussock-jumpers have been known to wear saddle-tweeds, lammies, swannies, or bush nighties,and on the tops, the snow-leggings might havecome out of the hill-bag. If they are hoofing it,they will be accompanied by a hill-pole, dog-flogger, nibby, mustering stick, or hill-stick.River work might well be involved. Shouldsomeone have an accident they will be carriedout on a bush-hearse. If hillmen encounternoxious animals when they are out on thetops, they will bowl them with a shottie or asmoke-pole.

They could eat hockeysticks or 365s, whichtown-dwellers know as mutton chops. In theevening, hash-me-gandy and brownie could beon the menu. These delicacies could havebeen prepared for them by the packie,blacksmith, doctor, babbling brook, greasy,cookeroo, or doughroaster at the outstation,at the hill hut, or at the musterers’ hut. If theycooked for themselves, lizards had a tuckerallowance for themselves and their dogs.

When the top man or top beat man meetsup with the outside, middle, and low orbottom beat man, all will be thoroughlygruntled, although possibly rather doggo.They will look forward to getting off the hilland getting the string in on the battens andready for the board or for the bumbarbers.On the way, the dog wings, the sheep arewinged, and there is a wing man out on thewing. While sheep can string, dogs can ring.The mob might contain, among others,some dingos, handlebars (horned merinos),rattlers, carryovers, broken-mouths,Hokonuis, double-deckers, hermits,greybacks, shivey-backs, overlanders, andgaspers. Tail-enders could be dropped off themob. It is not unusual for a coarse-britchedAuntie or a freezer ewe to be tormented by ameat-mangler or woolclasser (a dog thatworries sheep). Sometimes a canine non-conformist such as a Sunday dog, sooner,carpet grass, or powder puff may be wallopedwith a flogger. On the other hand, a bread andbutter dog that keeps running on the blind willget an extra bit of tucker.

In their work out the back, musterersmight come across a shit-brindle (a wild cow)or a grunter hunter and his bush-happy blockmate who are chasin’ bacon on a doggingblock and will want to talk pork rather thanstalk pork. Some of these hunters have beenstalking the bush for days and willundoubtedly refer to the noxious bush lawyerin the second-growth as snag-toothed barristerand rangiora as bushman’s friend. Perhapsthey will harp on about the dungy tarn on top

of a shingle-slip or a bluffy face. If a whare boy(single shepherd) is really lucky, he might gainthe bottom wire of the fence (marry thefarmer’s daughter). If he’s unlucky, hispresence might be required pearldiving at thedagpickers’ ball (a wet-weather job under thewoolshed, sorting wool from dags). Afterdoing a dog job, a tussock-jumper might beginto feel symptoms typical of a matagourimermaid and will want to head down countryand get a job with a mudflat cockie. There, hecould care for bowies, bentlegs, milk lambs,and works lambs, round up the pasture liceand maggot magnets in the flying flock,and even enter the Golden Shears or theSilver Plough. Then again, he might go andstrangle teats.

A BIT OF A TRIALA bust has nothing to do with statues andchests — it is a non-completion of a dog-trialcourse. A dog-trial course involves long heads,long pulls, short heads, and zigzags, and dogscan become trial-happy. About dog trials onecan read, ‘The main problem was that it wasdifficult to get a grip on the pull, so when thetime came to put a bit more on them on theflat, they were off.’ Heads can be skinny andrunouts can be widened, and slippers andliberators are usually great dog men, not merekennel-followers.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICEThe rural world is perceived as a man’s worldin much rural writing. A farmperson is oftenknown by his allegiances and enthusiasms —he may be a noted Coopworth man, a keenRomney man, a great oilskin man, a hill-country man, or a real No. 8 man. A dogtrialist is often a dog man. He is occasionally areal Swanndri man but more likely a Swanniebloke.

Rural folk were not without prejudice. Aprimitive flail is known as an Irish combine;tumatakuru or matagouri is known as wildIrishman; and an Irish merino is a wild pig.Taranaki is unjustly known for its makeshiftinitiatives with the Taranaki gate (first seen inSouth Auckland), the Taranaki drive, aTaranaki (or Nelson, or Maori) huntaway, andTaranaki silage. A Taranaki farmer is awebfoot in the South Island, and ChateauTaranaki is a brew enjoyed at the end of a longhot day. During the twentieth century, ethnichay and Maori hay were used to describe landthat had been left to revert or was overgrown.

Station and farm cadets were variouslyknown as lambs, ewe lambs, gate-openers,billy boys, remittance men, Archies, jackeroos(from Australian rural English), or silvertails.A novice shearer is often given the name ofshearling. A townie, a townie dog, and atownie car can scarce be tolerated in somerural situations. To the high-country folk,downlands are mud flats, and they are farmedby mudflat cockies. Paddock-shepherds arereferred to as shit-kickers by lizards. A farmerwith a large holding in pioneering Taranakiwas known as a broadacre man, and back-country types could take a while to warm to anewch’m. And although Waikato dandruffmight look pretty, it’s not good milking tucker.

TO CRUTCH OR NOT TO CRUTCH

The crutch man is not a crutcher and does notwork in the crutching season, but he isinvolved in sheep work. He uses a crutch, andhis work while on the crutch is to employ an S-shaped rod on the end of a pole duringplunge dipping, to push and pull sheep underthe dipping fluid (lice and keds beingnotoriously populous on the heads of sheep.The crutch man was variously called the poleman and the man on the pole. Crutchers are

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kept busy crutching (the cutting of woolaround the rear of sheep), which is oftenloosely applied to include bellying, andwigging or clipping. But crutchers canspecifically fly crutch, ring crutch, ring, eye-wig, eye-clip, half-crutch, or buttonhole.

UP, OFF, OUT, DOWN,AND AROUND

Phrasal verbs are very much a part ofruralspeak. A paddock can be shut up, a horseis saddled up, a mare bags up; lambs can bemothered on or mothered up, the sheep areshedded up and penned up, and a paddockhas its stumps bladed out before it is workedup and then sown down. Paddocks and stockare not just grazed; they graze out and theygraze off. Dairy cows might have pugged upthe breaks, but nevertheless if they have milkfever they should not be milked out too muchin the first few days. Sheep are mustered off,drafted off, and boxed up, while scrub andrushes are burnt off. In dirty weather,musterers can be snowed off or fogged in. Shyfeeders must be culled out. To doze off in therural world is not the same as it is in the urban:it is a transitive verb, associated with bulldozeractivity. Land can be split up to such an extentthat farmers have to walk off during adownturn, with their margins being so lean.Young bulls should be bailed up with the cowsand crops bulked down. It is customary toread, ‘broken-mouthed ewes are turned in toeat off the tops, and the roots are thenharrowed out in breaks’, and it pays to keepthe farm fully stocked up if the schedule’scoming down.

And the land? One takes on land(although originally one took it up), takesover land, is on the land, walks off, and evenwalks on the land, as in: ‘Mid Dome’s owners

walked off without a brass razoo in the 1930sand three tough brothers from Awakawalked on.’

WHICH PADDOCK,IN WHAT COUNTRY?

Rural periodicals are rich sources ofcollocations for such lexemes as ‘country’ and‘paddock’. Country is commonly late,young, rabbit, tall, shady, huntaway, sand,tussock, nursery, hungry, scrubby, bush-bound, sour, sick, kindly, rough, light, heavy,mean, dirty, sunny, high, reverted, rugged,papa, pakihi, foothill, headwater, bush,fern, scrub, snowgrass, ragged, cow, tough,rehab, clean, lambing, tupping, bush-sick,cow-sick, sheep-sick, healthy, wether,hogget, ewe, low, tractor, etc. If it is easy, itwill be pigskin country (able to be musteredon horseback), and if not, it’s foot, walking,or marrowbone country. Some land can betop pig country; it might be summer runcountry or fat-lamb country.

A limper might be found in a hospitalpaddock, an isolation paddock, a safepaddock, a bush paddock, a maternitypaddock, a sacrifice paddock, a housepaddock, or a handy paddock, by a paddockshepherd. Paddock sheep are not usuallyfound out on the run and are only rarelyused to give the hills the hoof and toothtreatment.

MODERN TIMESThe economic, mercantile, and stud breedingaspects of New Zealand farming have coinedmost rural acronyms in recent years. At theFieldays, we are likely to see exhibits ofAFFCO (an early usage), MOPANZ,CAPONZ, MIRINZ, WRONZ, and REAP. In

the dairying world it is no longer possible torun Artesian Friesians (watering down milkbefore collection from the farm) or the bestcow (the cold water tap). Dairying has gonehigh-tech on conversions all over New Zealandas well as on traditional cow country. Milksolids (MS/kg) are now used to grade cowsand milk, rather than butterfat. A downermight need a visit from the vet, especially if thefarmer is conscious of the genetic gain or BW(breeding worth) of the cow to his herd. Adairy farmer no longer gets a milk cheque or acream cheque after taking his milk down tothe cheese-punchers at the cheese factory orto the creamery or skimming-station.

Monitor farms and peak rights are often inthe news, and two-wheeled hacks and the bullin the bowler hat are frequently seen nearherringbones these days. Sharemilking from itsinitial usage around 1909 was developed intospecifically lower order, 29%, 39%, variableorder, and 50/50 arrangements. Farm ownersnow seek herd managers, equity managers,farm technicians, and contract milkers in theSituations Vacant columns. The morepolitically aware describe their properties asfinishing farms or pre-conditioning farms,although fattening farms and fat lamb farmsand fats are still advertised for sale.

These examples, gleaned from ruralperiodicals, farm and local histories,newspapers, technical texts, and websites likewww.fencepost.com have provided only someof the interesting features of distinctive ruralNew Zealand English.

Dianne Bardsley is a PhD research fellow at theNew Zealand Dictionary Centre at VictoriaUniversity of Wellington.

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PAGE 3 NZWORDS AUGUST 2001

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M A I L B A GThe New Zealand DictionaryCentre is jointly funded by OxfordUniversity Press and VictoriaUniversity of Wellington toresearch all aspects of NewZealand English and to publishNew Zealand dictionaries andother works.

FROM THE CENTRE

The Editor of NZWords welcomesreaders’ letters and other

contributions on their recentobservations of New Zealand

usage, both positive and negative.Please write to:

Tony Deverson, Editor, NZWordsDepartment of English, University of

Canterbury Private Bag 4800, ChristchurchFax: (03) 364 2065

Email: a.deverson@engl.canterbury.ac.nz

�

Graeme Kennedy, DirectorNew Zealand Dictionary Centre

Graeme KennedyDirector, New Zealand

Dictionary CentreSchool of Linguistics and

Applied Language Studies,Victoria University of Wellington

PO Box 600 Wellington Email: nzdc@vuw.ac.nz

Fax: (03) 463 5604

Since its establishment in 1997, the NewZealand Dictionary Centre has receivedsupport from many sources. In the firstinstance Dr Harry Orsman made it possiblefor the Centre to get off the ground by givingto Victoria University the intellectual propertyrights in his Dictionary of New Zealand English.His work thus forms the core of the Centre’sdatabase of distinctive New Zealandisms,those words, phrases, and usages that haveevolved first or solely in New Zealand and helpto make New Zealand English different fromother varieties of English.

The DNZE has shown that up north anddown south could be destinations, perhapsinvolving a bit of bush-bashing, and thatNew Zealand was a place where children wentto kindy, ate their play lunch, and worejandals. New Zealanders could be jake, couldboil the zip, or be told not to get their tits in atangle. Peggy squares, gib board, GST, ranchsliders, easies, and solo mums were amongthe words that the DNZE showed made anearly appearance here. New Zealand farmscarried stock and had super applied forfertiliser. New Zealanders ate lemon fish, fly-cemeteries, lemon honey, hokey-pokey, jaffas,and, of course, our vegies. We said ‘good-oh’and ‘that’ll be the day’. We might have joineda hikoi or been told to think big.

ADDING TO THE RECORD

The DNZE contained some 6000 headwords.Since its publication the Centre’s researchersand a number of eagle-eyed correspondentsin different parts of New Zealand havecontinued to note new or unfamiliar NewZealand words or usages. After investigationto confirm that they are indeed NewZealandisms, several thousand previouslyunrecorded items have found their way intoour Incomings Database, accompanied bycitations showing how the words are used.Among the likely New Zealandisms that havebeen added to the Centre’s database recently,for example, are hotwater cupboard,conservation estate, paralympian, farmstay,zorbing, parallel importing, tiki tour,queenmaker, party hopper, waka jumper,munted, kai card, zip-zap, Jafa, and fifty-oner.

The rural sector has, of course,contributed many words to New ZealandEnglish over the last 150 years. Recentexamples collected at the Centre includeshuttle stallion, cocky’s string, heli-mustering(the word mustering as a farming activity also

first appeared here), bog orange, and bot-bombs. At a time of rapid change in farming,even the familiar stock and station agenciesare nowadays often referred to asagribusinesses.

PROFESSORIAL GIFT

A very special and much-appreciatedcontribution of a different kind to the work ofthe New Zealand Dictionary Centre hasrecently been made by Emeritus Professor IanA. Gordon, who both inspired and traineda whole generation of New Zealandlexicographers from the 1940s. ProfessorGordon has donated to the Centre’s library asplendid collection of English dictionaries,some of which date from the 18th century.His generous donation includes the first eighteditions of the Concise Oxford Dictionary. Theevolution of this familiar and widely usedsmall Oxford Dictionary from the time whenthe Fowler brothers were editors will itselfmake an interesting study at some futuretime.

NEW DICTIONARY IN THE MAKING

A major new project now under way at theCentre is the compilation of the New ZealandOxford Dictionary. In addition to covering thewords from the general lexicon of Englishthat readers might like to consult (to checkthe meaning, pronunciation, or spelling ofadjacent or interlocutor, for example), thenew NZOD will contain several thousand NewZealandisms such as those mentioned at thebeginning of this report, and which help giveNew Zealand English its distinctive flavour.The systematic coverage of New Zealandcontributions to the general lexicon ofEnglish as it is used here is beingcomplemented by the inclusion of a largenumber of brief encyclopedic entriescovering distinctive or significant NewZealand places, historical events, institutions,icons, and individual New Zealanders. It willbe possible to report more fully at a later dateon this large project as it develops over thenext two or three years.

Researchers at the New ZealandDictionary Centre continue to welcomecomments and observations on NewZealandisms from readers of NZWords. We canbe contacted via our website atwww.vuw.ac.nz/lals/nzdc (see below), by

email at <nzdc@vuw.ac.nz>, or at our postaladdress:

The New Zealand Dictionary CentreSchool of Linguistics and Applied Language StudiesVictoria University of WellingtonPO Box 600Wellington.

WEBSITE!WEBSITE!

http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/nzdc

The New Zealand DictionaryCentre is pleased to advise that ithas at last set up its stall incyberspace, at the address above.Warms thanks are due to Dr PaulWarren of the School of Linguisticsand Applied Language Studies atVictoria University, who hasdeveloped the site for the Centre.With the silver fern motif of theCentre’s OUP dictionaries in thebackground, and Harry Orsman’slandmark DNZE standing tall besidethe recurrent index, the siteprojects a distinctive local andlexical identity. As well as essentialinformation about the Centre andits staff, there is opportunity forvisitors to send details of newlyencountered New Zealand words bymeans of an online template and tocall up all issues of NZWords to date.Links are provided to OxfordUniversity Press Australia and NewZealand, the Australian NationalDictionary Centre, and the OxfordEnglish Dictionary. This is a start; asalways, readers’ suggestions foraugmenting and enhancing the sitewill be welcome.

PAGE 5 NZWORDS AUGUST 2001

City to Surf, the four avenues, little Bosnia, theOrbiter, Rangi, shagroon, Show Day, the Strip. Noprizes for guessing, given the title above, thatthese are all what I want to call Canterbury or —to use another of them — Cantabrians’ words.The fact is that without assistance those livingoutside Canterbury are less likely to recognise thereferents and the commonality of these termsthan those within. They exemplify a regionallyrestricted form of New Zealand Englishvocabulary, undoubtedly paralleled (to someextent at least) in other parts of the country byusages equally mystifying to Cantabrians. How dowe come to have Kiwi words that in many caseswill be unfamiliar to a majority of NewZealanders, and where do they fit into a view ofour variety of English more generally?

The existence of words and meaningspeculiar to New Zealanders as a whole is of coursenot in doubt. In our home-grown dictionaries,and above all in The Dictionary of New ZealandEnglish (DNZE) with its full historical coverage, wefind ample evidence of a strong collective ornational identity.

However, dialect study elsewhere, whethergeographical or social, does not stop at the levelof national communities but seeks differencesamong still smaller regional groupings ofspeakers. Such variation is a significant and well-documented feature of the major northernhemisphere Englishes, as evidenced by works likeThe English Dialect Dictionary and The Dictionary ofAmerican Regional English. Nearer home attentionto lexical differentiation within Australia hasrecently produced a number of regionaldictionaries: Tassie Terms, Words from the West, and(most recently) Voices of Queensland. For all NewZealand’s relatively small size, are there words inat least some quantity that serve to reflectregional (intranational) identities andcharacteristics here also?

Linguists have generally concluded that NZEis a highly uniform variety regionally (althoughnot socially) speaking. Other than the celebratedsouthern South Island post-vocalic /r/ (the‘Southland burr’) our accent appears to show nomarked local peculiarities, despite insistentclaims to the contrary made from time to time bylaypersons. But is our vocabulary as constantaround the country as our pronunciation?

There are certainly a few well-known cases ofinter-regional lexical variation in NZE. The Otagoand Southland use of crib for bach, and theNorth Island preference for punnet over pottle,for example, have frequently been commentedon. A certain number of words have beenidentified as specific to Southland or to the WestCoast of the South Island or to the South Islandgenerally. Some of these cited variants are nolonger current, and where they remain theymight seem to be merely exceptions that provethe rule of uniformity. On the other hand, Laurieand Winifred Bauer have recently providedevidence of systematic variations in children’splayground usage in three broad New Zealanddialect areas.

UNIQUE WORDSFOR UNIQUE THINGS

Examples like crib and bach illustrate one majorkind of regional variation, where two words exist

for the same thing, either mutually exclusively(more or less) in two areas or with both termsused in one area and only one in another. Ineither case we have a kind of intradialectalsynonymy (called ‘heteronymy’ in someaccounts). There is, however, another class ofregionally restricted word (or word-sense) wherereference is made to something found in oneregion and not in others, so that there can be noquestion of finding synonyms for it in othervarieties or subvarieties. All regional vocabularieshave these two kinds of items, those withcontrastive equivalents elsewhere and thosewithout. It is the latter category, I suggest, thatgives by far the greater yield of regionallyrestricted words and meanings within NZE.

All major areas in New Zealand are likely tohave significant numbers of terms with purelylocal reference or importance. At least some ofthese will be known to a greater or lesser extentoutside their own area, but their origins andpredominant use lie within one specific region.Words associated with my own Canterbury localityare used to illustrate this kind of variation here;whether Canterbury is more or less lexicallydistinctive than other New Zealand provinces isan open question.

Two further observations about lexicaldistinctiveness regionally within New Zealand aresuggested by the present investigation. One is thatlocal variation is much more substantial whenhistorical as well as present-day materials aretaken into account. Of the more than 80 itemsfound in DNZE that are identified by labelling ordefinition as specific to Canterbury in some way,about half relate to past events andcircumstances, having become obsolete at varioustimes from the earliest European settlementonwards.

The other point similarly is that the moreproper names one includes in the inventory ofterms, the stronger the case for localdistinctiveness becomes. To the list compiledfrom a search of DNZE I have added another50 or 60 examples from my and others’ personalexperience, and almost all of these are propernouns and phrases. The extent to whichcapitalised terms are admissible in dictionaries(and accounts of lexical variation) is arguable,although the argument has been rather left

behind by the increasing number of‘encyclopedic’ dictionaries currently beingproduced (the New Zealand Oxford Paperback is onesuch). Even these, however, confine themselves toentries for more prominent places and persons,leaving the many thousands of other names(which do in fact figure prominently in everydaydiscourse) to be gathered in atlases, streetindexes, telephone books, business directories,and the like. For the purposes of the currentstudy proper names are admitted wheresomething other than simply the primarydenotative name for a place, institution, group,etc. is involved. Hence abbreviated and otherindirect, derived, or secondary forms are thosemeriting inclusion here.

CANTERBURYTRANSPLANTED

The most explicitly regional terms in this set arethose employing the primary geographical andprovincial name as modifier. Historically thetransference of the English city name to NewZealand begins with the Canterbury Association,founded by J. R. Godley and E. G. Wakefield in1848 under the presidency of the Archbishop ofCanterbury, which undertook the establishmentof the Canterbury Settlement on the CanterburyBlock purchased from the New ZealandCompany. Emigrants making up the initial waveof Anglican settlement in late 1850 and followingyears were predictably dubbed CanterburyPilgrims, alluding to Chaucer’s medievaltravellers (and occasionally Pilgrim Fathers with aNorth American analogy).

Detailed investigation of New Zealand’sbotany and zoology in time revealed restricteddistribution of certain species, to some of which aprovincial label could appropriately be applied.DNZE records Canterbury broom, Canterburymudfish, and Canterbury smelt, and we can add,for example, local varieties of alpine hebe calledCanterbury hebe (Hebe canterburiensis) orCanterbury whipcord (H. cheesemanii and H.tetrasticha). Canterbury lamb is a rather differentkettle of fauna, being the name by which allexport New Zealand sheepmeat was long knownin the principal market of the UK, neatlyexploiting the original Englishness of the name aswell as acknowledging a prolific antipodeansource of the commodity.

By ellipsis Canterbury lamb could becomesimply Canterbury (or prime Canterbury), andthe name tout court (as with other toponyms) canalso have frequent metonymic uses, especiallywith reference to a sporting team from theprovince (‘Canterbury win Super 12 again’), tothe University of Canterbury (‘studying Classics atCanterbury’), and to the clothing companyCanterbury of New Zealand with itsinternationally known Canterbury trade mark(‘Canterbury wins big export order’). In WorldWar I, like Auckland, Wellington, and Otago, thenoun was pluralised to denote one of the NewZealand battalions organised on regional lines(‘the Canterburys fought at Gallipoli’), so that anindividual soldier might be a Canterbury. Acommon print media abbreviation of the nameproduces Canty, which could be given a spokenrealisation (unlike Wgtn, say) but appears neverto be.

CANTERBURY WORDS:LANGUAGE UNDER THE NOR’WEST ARCH

TONY DEVERSON

Differences with theNeighbours 1

As well as in more obvious areas(indigenous loanwords, say) contrastsbetween NZE and AusE usage canelsewhere be quite subtle.

Sky digital subscribers now exposed tomore in the way of Australian politicalnews on Channel 17 might among othershave noted that whereas we refer to plainGST (i.e. the tax in general), this recentimport into Australia commonly comeswith the article added: ‘How has theintroduction of the GST affected yourbusiness?’

PAGE 6 NZWORDS AUGUST 2001

THE ‘CANTABRIAN’QUESTION

A full lexicographical entry for Canterbury wouldalso recognise the adjectival or attributive use ofthe word in general contexts (‘Canterbury wines’,‘Canterbury tourism’, ‘the Canterbury region’,etc.). In such uses Cantabrian provides analternative; however, this word is much morelikely to be used as a noun, meaning ‘inhabitantof Canterbury’, for which Canterbury itself isunavailable. DNZE’s earliest citation for the nounis as recent as 1969, and it has proved morepopular and natural than the little-usedCanterburian, which, however, some have tried toinsist on as the more ‘correctly’ derived of the two(in British English this is the (little-used) adjectivemeaning ‘of Canterbury’ — see the OED).

A Cantabrian abbreviation of Cantabrian(and Canterbury) is Cantab (with or withoutstop), again chiefly written, and especially as (the)Cantabs with reference to a representativesporting team (‘Cantabs down ND’). The Britishuse of Cantab. by contrast is as a shorteningof Cantabrigiensis, ‘of Cambridge’, fromCantabrigia, the neo-Latin name of CambridgeUniversity. MA (Cantab.) after one’s namedenotes a degree from Cambridge notCanterbury. Hence it has sometimes been arguedthat Cantabrian is an illegitimate and potentiallyconfusing form because its true referent isBritish, not New Zealand. This is a purist not apragmatic approach. Furthermore the full wordCantabrian has in fact no British meaning; it is arecorded English form, but only with reference tothe northern Spanish region of Cantabria —hardly a possible source of confusion there. TheNew Zealand use makes the abbreviation Cantab.ambiguous, to be sure, but more in theory thanactuality. However, the fortuitous homonymy witha word having Cambridge associations is nicelyironic in view of the strong Oxford (ChristChurch) connection in Canterbury’s origins.

The need for the convenient Cantabrian isthe greater because there is no single word for aresident of what is by far Canterbury’s largestcentre of population (cf. Aucklander,Wellingtonian, Dunedinite; *Christchurcher or*Christchurchite was never a starter).Christchurch, like other big cities, has acquiredits share of nicknames: the straightforward City ofthe Plains is the oldest, recorded from 1851 whenthe city was still more notional than actual;Garden City is the most familiar (associated withthe ‘more English than the English’ theme),evidently dating from the time of theInternational Exhibition in the city in 1906–07.Geoffrey Rice in Christchurch Changing (1999)attributes this description to British ExhibitionCommissioner Sir John Gorst, and notes itsuperseded the previously common City of Trees.The City Council’s 1990s marketing slogan theCity that Shines was meant to promote a less staidimage than the traditional one, but it was far fromuniversally well received.

Residents of the city have quite literally swornby Christchurch!, the lengthened form no doubtintended to take some of the force from theimprecation. This oath (also found as ohChristchurch! or just Christchurch!) is noted inSidney Baker’s New Zealand Slang (1941), butseems dated now. A common abbreviation ofChristchurch is ChCh (Ch.Ch., etc.), which onemight expect to be confined to written contextsbut does in fact have an occasional (jocular)realisation as ‘chuh-chuh’. Canterbury’s secondcity, Timaru in South Canterbury, yields the noun(and adjective?) Timaruvian (the noun recordedin DNZE from 1889), evidently on the model ofPeruvian; one Christchurch suburb, Fendalton,unusually, has its own derivative, Fendaltonian,which has connotations of affluence and

refinement associated with that part of the city;and other Canterbury place names arerepresented in such forms as Rangitata goose(local name for the paradise duck) and(stretching the boundaries of the region to thelimit) Mount Cook flea (a weta) and Mount Cooklily (for which a 19th-century alternative namewas Rockwood lily, after Rockwood Station inCanterbury).

Mention should also be made here of certainindigenous local names overlaid and supersededby English forms at the time of Pakehasettlement, but restored to wider publicawareness in recent decades through bilingualnaming and signage etc. Thus the Maori word forroughly the area where the city of Christchurchnow stands, Otautahi (‘the place of Tautahi [aNgai Tahu chief]’), translates as Christchurchand sometimes replaces it in English contexts.Similarly Waitaha, referring originally to theplains of the Canterbury region, has become theMaori word for Canterbury as defined in Pakehageography, for example in the name of a newState Special School in the region, the WaitahaLearning Centre. Other Maori names associatedwith particular localities in the city and provinceare ‘resurfacing’ in this way too. These are theoldest Canterbury words of all, with pre-Canterbury origins.

COLONIAL COINAGESReturning to the beginnings of city and province(as it became in 1853), there are other distinctiveregional items to note. Other settlements hadtheir first ships (and New South Wales its ratherdifferently motivated First Fleet), but Canterburyremembers more precisely its first four ships, theCharlotte Jane, Sir George Seymour, Cressy, andRandolph, the first group of CanterburyAssociation vessels to set sail from Home, arrivingin Lyttelton close on one another’s heels inDecember 1850. Their nearly 800 passengersconstituted the main body of settlers, althoughother ships soon followed; there were moreover anumber of European families already establishedin Canterbury in the 1840s, for whom the unusualword pre-Adamite (noun and adjective) was laterreserved, conferring a quasi-divine status on theRhodes and Deans and others who were the ‘real’first (white) settlers in the region. (Cf. OEDAdamite and pre-adamite.) DNZE cites pre-Adamite from 1930, but it has subsequently beenantedated to 1907, and it might well have been a19th-century usage. Contemporary documentssometimes distinguish the pre-existing colonistsfrom the pilgrims by using the term old settler forthe former.

The word shagroon is arguably the mostcurious term in this early colonial set. Wronglydefined in some overseas dictionaries, ofuncertain origin, and variable in its meaning(and spelling) to some extent, shagroon (orshagaroon etc.) is hard to pin down. Citationsshow the word being used, mostly disparagingly,of various ‘outsider’ elements in the developingpopulation, contrastively with the pilgrims of theCanterbury Association; in particular it denotes

the initially unwelcome Australian pastoralistswho were being attracted to the region’s plainsand back country at much the same time as thefirst ships arrived from England. (These sheep-men were also dubbed prophets, from theirpredictions of disaster for the English settlers’plans for dependence on arable farming.)

Although Arnold Wall, notably, advanced analternative origin (in the English slang formshabroon, ‘shabby or disreputable person’), thelexicographical consensus has been thatshagroon derives from shaughraun, a spelling ofIrish seachran meaning ‘wandering’. This isEdward Morris’s explanation in his Austral English(1898), later adopted by the OED and DNZEamong others. Considerations of spelling mightcount against Wall (although DNZE does recordone instance of shaproon with <p>); all the sameit remains difficult to counter his objection that abody of English (and Anglican) settlers is anunlikely context in which to find an Irish wordbrought to (brief) prominence. Moreover, there’sa semantic shift here (including pejoration),which is not easily explained.

Other words marked in DNZE as havingparticular reference to early Canterbury includeburst (up) (of large runs, to subdivide or besubdivided), Cookham’s (in full Cookham’sboots), crow’s nest (a shepherd’s lookout), grass-thief (a person grazing sheep on another’s run),gridiron (to purchase alternate strips of land,effectively securing the intervening strips againstother buyers or users), rooster (a job-seeker),skinner (one exhausting land by constant sowingof the same crop, then moving on), the phraseeat (one’s) tutu or toot (to adjust to the trials ofcolonial life, as it were like stock ingestingpoisonous plants), and V-hut (the basic tent-shaped dwelling favoured for construction in theearly years of settlement). Beyond examples ofthis kind it is noticeable that Canterbury citationspredominate in DNZE entries for much of themore general New Zealand high country andpastoral farming lexis.

From the 20th century there aremiscellaneous obsolete items such as Bell’s brick(a loaf), (Harry) Pannells (mustering boots, aftertheir Christchurch manufacturer), the Perishable(a transalpine goods train named for itscontents), paddock referring to the Walthamrailway yards in Christchurch (hence PDKchalked on a wagon = ‘send to Waltham’), aparticular kind of scow, and names of formerChristchurch street-gangs (Diehards, Scalpers,Skulldraggers, etc.). Historians of Canterburycould no doubt nominate further examples fromall periods, especially of a more ephemeral andmore narrowly parochial kind.

One can sometimes spot ephemeraamong current usages. Little Bosnia is a casein point. This is the ironic name popularlygiven to an inner-Christchurch commercialdevelopment (‘Cathedral Junction’) curtailedin mid-construction by the death of its owner,leaving a concrete shell with a passingresemblance to scenes of war-ravaged Sarajevoat that time in the 1990s. The site hasremained in this unfinished state for severalyears, but its disparaging name is likely soonto pass into history now that completion ofthe development by a new owner has beenannounced.

A Canterbury usage of American origin,Deep Freeze, part of Cantabrians’consciousness since the mid-1950s, hasslipped from view in the last two or three yearswith the withdrawal of the US Navy frominvolvement in the US Antarctic Program(Operation Deepfreeze) and the closing ofthe naval support base at ChristchurchAirport, which was for so long referred tosimply as Deep Freeze.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 7

Differences with theNeighbours 2

Trans-Tasman lexical contrast sometimestakes the form of different meaningsattached to the same word item in thetwo countries. Bush (as the bush) is aprime example, together with floraland fauna terms like bellbird andcabbage-tree.What does an Australian mean by sayingthey have found twenty dollars ‘down theback of the lounge’?

PAGE 7 NZWORDS AUGUST 2001

Many older usages have of courseremained in use. The Canterbury region isidiosynscratic in its observation of one of NewZealand’s statutory holidays. The AnniversaryDay celebrated (on various dates) in otherparts of the country passes virtually unnoticedin Canterbury (15 December), the publicholiday being transferred to Show Day, theFriday of the Canterbury A&P Show Week inChristchurch in November. This week toracegoers is alternatively Cup Week, duringwhich both the New Zealand Trotting Cup (atAddington, i.e. Addington Raceway) and theNew Zealand (galloping) Cup (at Riccarton,i.e. Riccarton Racecourse) are contested.Show Weekend is the long weekend includingthe holiday, which at the show itself istraditionally known as people’s day.

Like other cities, Christchurch hasdeveloped a repertoire of distinctively namedevents in its sporting and cultural calendar.The City to Surf mass-participation fun runfrom Cathedral Square to QE2 (standardlocal usage for the Queen Elizabeth IIStadium); the Coast to Coast endurance race(west to east across the South Island), the one-day event being known as the Longest Day;and events belonging to the City Council’s‘Summertimes’ programme, such as theFestival of Romance and Classical Sparks (anopen-air concert), can all be included here.

THE REGIONAL WEATHERLocally meaningful terms are commonlyfound in the characteristic weather of aregion. Winds seem especially prone to beingdistinctively named, personified even, fromthe Classical zephyr to the colonial barber.Canterbury winds are more prosaically andless uniquely titled, but are no less aningrained part of the regional experience. Thetrio of prevailing nor’easter (or nor-easteretc.), cold sou’wester, and warm, drynor’wester have strong local resonances; thenor’wester above all providing a constant topicof report and conversation since earliestcolonial times on account of its strength andcapacity to enervate. (DNZE records a high-country expression used of a highly efficientheading dog, one that could supposely head anor’wester.) The adjectival nor’west acquires aCantabrian meaning in phrases like ‘nor-westconditions’, while the collocation nor’westarch refers to what is seen in the western skyon a typical nor’west day, the cloud coverextending low in the sky leaving only a narrowstrip of clear blue below the ‘arch’ of thecloud-line.

Another cloud pattern associated withnor’west weather, especially in inlandCanterbury, is the hogsback (hog’s back,hogback), applied to ‘torpedo-shaped’ cloudsas a number of references describe them, asure sign of a nor’west rainstorm brewing inthe ranges.

The particular topography of Canterbury,with high country inland from the plains, alsoproduces a number of distinctive regionalusages. The noun front country is used of thegrazing land of the plains, contrastively withthe more general New Zealand back country.Similarly down or down-country (also Otago)refers to movement or location away from thefoothills and towards the coast. There is also aspecifically Canterbury sense of the wordgorge, to denote the high-country catchmentarea of a river flowing through a ravine (orgorge ‘proper’), as in Rakaia Gorge etc.Another topographical term with extendedmeaning in Canterbury is Maori oven,referring to a large hole in the ground that is

or resembles the remains of a hangi or earthoven from former times.

Again, the physical barrier of the Port Hillsbetween Christchurch and its port gives thephrase over the hill special meaning. DNZErecords an obsolete go over the hill, meaningto be sent from the city to Lyttelton jail, butthe commoner reference is to the journeyfrom Lyttelton to the city, first achieved after1850 by way of the Bridle Path andsubsequently via the hole in (or through) thehill, as the rail tunnel opened in 1867 wastermed. The road tunnel completed nearly ahundred years later is normally just the tunnel.

BEING PARTICULARAs we see from some of the uses just cited, aparticular regional signification is oftensignalled by the use of the definite article with,and (often) initial capitalisation of, nouns ofotherwise general meaning. This is also wellillustrated by two examples in the openingsample, both relative newcomers. The Orbiteris a Christchurch bus service following aroughly circular path around the city, linkingmajor suburban malls etc., now added to thetraditional complement of bus routesradiating out from the city centre; and theStrip (shades of Hollywood) refers to thestretch of Oxford Terrace from Cashel Streetnorthwards, which has come to house avirtually continuous series of bars andrestaurants, with much of the dining and otheractivities located on the specially widened stripof footpath outside these premises.

These two items (also the Crossingassociated with the new Bus Xchange (sic))take their place among a set of moreestablished terms such as the Square and theTriangle, and further afield the Spit, theEstuary, the Groynes, and the Sugarloaf (thelast usually referring to the televisiontransmitter located there). DNZE has entriesfor the Plains and the Peninsula (Banks, thatis) with Canterbury reference. A historicalexample is the Domain, now occupied by theChristchurch Botanical Gardens. Like the firstfour ships, very specific to Chirstchurch arethe four avenues bounding the original cityblock and named after the 19th-centuryprovince’s only four superintendents. At leastsome of these city and regional names will beshared with but have different referents inother places (the Peninsula means somethingquite different in Otago or the Coromandel,for example); in their own ‘dialect area’ theybecome an integral part of the local idiom.

TEAMS ANDPERSONALITIES

The world of sport provides distinctive termsand names in Canterbury as in other regions.A key phrase here is red and black(s), appliedespecially to representative rugby teams, fromthe traditional colours of a Canterbury jersey(cf. similar formations elsewhere: Blues, Reds,green and golds, etc.). This is absent fromDNZE but is a long-standing form. A secondaryadjectival use is found with generalCanterbury sporting reference: ‘Red andBlack Sports Talk’ (a TV programme), ‘this isred and black country’ (in an advertisement).

Where particular sports are concernedthere has been of late a similar proliferation ofnames for teams at provincial level as atnational level (see ‘Sporting New Labels’ inNZWords 2.1). The greatest media prominenceis enjoyed by Crusaders, naming theCanterbury-based rugby union Super 12franchise, and appropriately recallingChaucer’s knight travelling to Canterburyfresh from foreign ventures; but Canterbury

also has for example its Bulls, Cats, Cavaliers,Flames, Rams, and Red Sox, in league,women’s hockey, men’s hockey, netball,basketball, and softball respectively.

Sports teams are fertile ground for thegeneration of nicknames, and at least some ofthese acquire a more public currency,especially those of outstanding players andpersonalities. Notable recent examples rangefrom those that are little more thanabbreviations or diminutives of first name orsurname (Harry, Mehrts, Macca, Toddy) tomore disguised epithets whose reference andsignificance might not be apparent tooutsiders (Bubs, Paddles).

Nicknames are nothing new, one shouldadd, as demonstrated by a 19th-centuryCanterbury personality from the academicrather than sporting world. ProfessorAlexander Bickerton, whose astrophysicaltheory of partial impact earns an entry inDNZE, was Bicky or Bick to his familiarsand others. Natural processes of informalabbreviation have operated on many otherregional names, for example Bally’s(Ballantyne’s store), CD (Canterbury Draughtbeer), Rangi (Rangi Ruru school), Rolly(Rolleston prison), Tatts (the formerTattersall’s Hotel in Christchurch), and theWaimak (Waimakariri river). A USabbreviation reinterpreted in recent monthsfor Canterbury police use is CHiPS, standingfor Canterbury (rather than California)Highway Patrol Squad.

Notable individuals occasionally have theirfull surnames enshrined in lexical forms.Nurse Maude in Canterbury denotes thenursing organisation founded by SibyllaMaude as New Zealand’s first district nursingscheme in 1896. The name of Professor IanCoop of Lincoln College (as it was) isembodied in the Coopworth sheep, which hisinterbreeding of Romney and BorderLeicester produced in the 1960s. And a moretransient example was the (temporary)renaming of Rangiora (the captain’s hometown) as Blackadderville following theCanterbury Crusaders’ Super 12 threepeat in2000.

This account and its Cantabrian examplesold and new does, I think, support the viewthat such lexical variation as exists within NewZealand English is predominantly a matter ofwords and meanings with exclusively regionalreference. In the data assembled for thisarticle instances of distinctive Canterburynaming of New Zealand-wide referents(heteronymy) are confined to a small numberof floral and faunal items: DNZE provides five-fingered Jack, an obsolete variant of five-finger; shark-bully used for torrentfish; andsilvery for smelt (also West Coast); theCanterbury (and Otago) use of (a) bush for‘patch of bush’ might also belong here.

The writer’s inventory of Canterburywords (most of which have been noted here) isrelatively small when compared, for example,to the numbers of entries in the Australian‘State dictionaries’ (Voices of Queensland listssome 500 entries). However, the present list iscertainly less than exhaustive, and readers inCanterbury and elsewhere are invited to makesuggestions for other inclusions. Further, non-Cantabrians might be moved to offer samplelists of words and expressions with particularsignificance in their own parts of thecountry. A dictionary incorporating all NewZealandisms in regional use, Cantabrianisms(if you will) among others, would I am suremake a substantial and engrossing publication.

Tony Deverson grew up not far fromCanterbury in England, and has taught at theNew Zealand university of that name since 1966.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6

PAGE 8 NZWORDS AUGUST 2001

In the last issue of NZWords we invitedteachers and classes to send samples of projectwork being done on New Zealand English inour schools. We received in response somegood-quality pieces of student writing on NewZealand usage from Western Heights HighSchool in Rotorua, among which thefollowing well-judged observations on a veryfamiliar Kiwi expression seemed especiallydeserving of being reproduced in thispublication. They were written by EmmaKehoe, in a class taught by Mrs Jane Collins.

What does ‘Ladies a plate’ tell us aboutNew Zealand society and customs, andespecially about the role of women in oursociety?

‘Ladies a plate’ is a saying that has beenaround since the turn of the century in NewZealand. However, its meaning has beenchanged and extended — we now have newsayings in its place.

‘Ladies a plate’ originally applied to thoseladies, non-working, who had the time toattend regular social gatherings with otherladies in similar circumstances. Rather thanthe host providing food for all the guests,each was expected to ‘bring a plate’ — sometype of food appropriate to the occasion, andable to be shared around those present.

When these occasions were at night,including the various gentlemen, ladies werestill expected to provide food, in keeping withthe wifely role of cook and cleaner. As itbecame more and more common for womento work as well as the men, the saying changedinto ‘bring a plate’ — applicable to men andwomen both.

This saying has its pitfalls. It can be takenliterally, and an empty plate brought. This issomething many immigrants have done, mygrandmother among them. With theincreasing number of people and theircultures immigrating to New Zealand, ‘ladiesa plate’ is fast becoming obsolete.

In the Rotorua area this saying is used byabout 50% of people — generally those over30, therefore in circumstances in which theycan host dinners. The over-40s are even morelikely to use this saying, as it is slightlyoutdated. Those who no longer ask ladies tobring a plate have two sayings of their own.

For the over-30 age group, the saying usedin place of ‘bring a plate’ is ‘potluck dinner’,which has filtered in from overseas. It carriesthe same meaning as ‘bring a plate’, and hasthe added advantage of not being takenliterally. This also reflects the time mostpeople have to spare for social activities —dinnertime, or at night. ‘Ladies a plate’referred more to light snacks and afternoontea food.

The teenage group of course have theirown slang: as most do not eat ‘normally’, thesaying is ‘bring some munchies’, basicallymeaning ‘if you want to eat it, you bring it’.Most teenagers are also not in a position tohost full meals, so snacks are moreappropriate.

‘Ladies a plate’ served a good purpose inits day. However, like many phrases, thedevelopment of English is making it graduallyobsolete, especially among today’s youth.

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The New Zealand Dictionary CentreVictoria University of Wellington

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Email: nzdc@vuw.ac.nzWebsite: http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/nzdc

Director of the New Zealand Dictionary Centre:Graeme Kennedy

Editor: Tony Deverson

© Copyright 2001 Oxford University PressPhotocopying of this newsletter is permitted provided that allcopies include the name of the newsletter (which appears atthe foot of each page) as an acknowledgment of source. Allother forms of storage and reproduction are restricted underthe normal terms of copyright law.

ISSN 1440-9909

An enquiry to the Centre concerningNew Zealand words originating in trademarksprompted a search of The Dictionary of NewZealand English for such items. Fifty-oneheadwords in the dictionary are recorded asbeing, or being associated with, proprietarynames past and present. The oldest registeredtrademarks appear to be those of nugget andzambuk, both from 1903. A complete list withbrief annotations follows:batt or pink batt a pad of insulation materialbig Ben obs. an alarm clockbomb orig. bom, a chocolate-coated ice creambowser a petrol pump, later by extension apetrol stationbush devil (possible propr. name) a wire-straining device used in fencingbuzzy bee the iconic pull-along toycalifont (possible propr. name) a gas-fuelledwater heater (cf. Brit. geyser)carbonette (possible propr. name) a coalbriquettechillybin an insulated container (cf. Aust. esky)Claytons the non-alcoholic beverage; usedadjectivally = sham, illusoryCookham boots obs. stout working boots (citedfrom 1872)double-happy a firecrackerdover obs. a knife, in the phrase a run of thedovers all you can eat (as a hired hand)Dover stove a small wood-burning iron stoveeskimo pie a chocolate-covered ice creamfibrolite an asbestos claddinggib(raltar board) gypsum plasterboard (fullform trademarked since 1932)glaxo an infant’s food supplement (Glaxobaby fig. a new recruit)illegal tegel a bird illegally taken for food(from the Tegel brand of dressed poultry)jaffa an orange-coated chocolate sweetjandal a.k.a. thong (trademarked since 1957)Kelly an American brand of axekerosene (also Aust. & US) paraffin oillilliput cards miniature playing cardsLockwood a pre-cut wooden building ofinterlocking tongue and groove constructionlux short for Electrolux a brand of vacuumcleaner (mostly used as verb)mallowpuff Maori one brown on the outsideand soft (or white) on the inside, likethe chocolate-coated marshmallow biscuit(implication of superficial Maoriness)malthoid bituminous roofing or flooringmaterialMonkey Grubber a mechanical stump-remover(Australian)nibble nook obs. a shop in or next to a cinema,selling ice creams etc.niggerhead obs. a pipe tobacconugget boot polish (also verb)pinex a wallboardPlumb an American brand of axe (cf. Kelly)Raro orig. an orange juice, subsequently a fruitdrink powdersamson a kind of two-wheeled trolley

sante bar a chocolate barsao cracker an unsweetened cracker biscuit (anacronym from ‘Salvation Army Ordinance’)Shacklock a wood or coal range (eponym)smoker a small pink sweet (orig. to counteractsmoker’s breath)Steinie short form of Steinlager (beer)supertom a grafted tomato plant (the similarmaxitom is not in DNZE)swanndri (becoming swannie etc.) a bush shirtor jacket (trademarked 1914)Thermette an outdoor water-boiler, a picnickettle (trademarked 1937)waratah a fence-standard (Australian)Weetbix rock a type of rock named from theflaked breakfast cerealWhakatane harrow(s) obs. a patented set ofharrowsWoodbine the English cigarette brand, hencein WWI an English soldierzambuk an ointment, and by metonymy aSt John ambulance officer attending sportsvenues etc.Zealandia (for New Zealand) used in productnames such as Zealandia sheep dipZip a water heater (trademarked 1933)

THE KIWI BRANDLADIES A

PLATE

Differences with theNeighbours 3

In respect of most of the notabletransatlantic English contrasts, Aussiesand Kiwis display a common allegiance,either to British or American usage or amixture of both. We both have cars withboots, queue rather than stand in line,mean the same thing by an entree, andfluctuate between film and movie, postand mail, etc.But it isn’t invariably so: Australia like theUS has its freeways and (domestic) yards,New Zealand like Britain its motorwaysand gardens. And it’s Labour here notLabor.