larrikin

knitandpurl "It was the same blokes at the Embassy tonight, the larrikins in suits, the quiet movers with brandy on their breath and Brylcreem in their hair. The ones with vagrant hands, the ones with bad teeth, broken noses, feet like snowshoes, bellies like baskets."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 278 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition Apr 3, 2010

simonw11 cheeky bugger Jul 10, 2009

qroqqa Aha, so Lewis Carroll was right in having Bill say 'arrum'. Jan 21, 2009

sionnach Standard pronunciation of such names as "Cork" and "Larkin" (the labour leader) reveals no tendency for Irish speakers of English to insert an extraneous vowel between the 'r' and 'k' sounds.

In contrast, it's quite common to hear how "warrum" the weather is, or that no "harrum" will come of having another drink. Jan 21, 2009

qroqqa Oh yes, but that's all merely plausibles. Demolishing the implausible is more fun. Jan 21, 2009

bilby Read on, our sleuth eventually turned up a stronger possibility for the origin. Jan 21, 2009

qroqqa In the obviously apocryphal story quoted below, the term 'trilled r' probably only means 'pronounced r', i.e. the normal Irish pronunciation [ˈlarkɪn] as against the England/Australia pronunciation [ˈlaːkɪn]. But could it have been a true trill or roll? Irish English is known to have had this value in the late eighteenth century; perhaps some 'broad' speakers still retained it in the 1860s.

The inserted vowel between the /rk/ is again likely to be an exaggeration by the hearer reporting it, since in their accent /r/ couldn't occur without a following vowel. It's true that Irish Gaelic and Irish English do insert [ə] between certain consonants, as in the names 'Colm', 'Fir Bolg' and the word 'film', but I don't know that /rk/ would do that, especially as it can be syllabified /lar.kɪn/. Jan 21, 2009

bilby "Well, where does this Ozword come from? E.E. Morris in 1898 (Austral English: A Dictionary of Australian Words, Phrases, and Usage)records a folk etymology which, he says, was believed by ‘99 persons out of 100’ at the end of the nineteenth century:
It is a phonetic spelling of the broad Irish pronunciation, with a trilled r,of the word larking.The story goes that a certain Sergeant Dalton, about the year 1869, charged a youthful prisoner at the Melbourne Police Court with being ‘a-larrr-akin’ about the streets’. The Police Magistrate, Mr. Sturt, did not quite catch the word—‘A what, Sergeant?’—‘Larrikin’, your Worchup’. The police court reporter used the word the next day in the paper, and it stuck.
Morris adds: ‘This story ... unfortunately ... lacks confirmation; for the record of the incident cannot be discovered, after long search in files by many people. Mr. Skeat’s warning must be remembered—"As a rule, derivations which require a story to be told turn out to be false".’ By the bye, W.W. Skeat (1835-1912) was an English lexicographer and philologist."

The meandering etymology continues here. Jan 21, 2009

missanthropist Australian slang. Sorry Seanahan, can't say when it came about. Jul 16, 2008

whichbe Hoodlum, rowdy. May 12, 2008

seanahan Origin Unknown, NOOOOOOOO! I really want to know where this comes from. Oct 28, 2007

chained_bear Ha! Great word! It doesn't sound at all like what it means. Oct 27, 2007