The Quick Brown Fox

by Frank Devine

 

 

 
 


Extract

drongo
G.A. Wilkes, editor of A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms, has convinced me, that the key credit for the spread of 'drongo' as a colloquialism for an inept person belongs to a no-win racehorse of that name (whose existence I once doubted). Professor Wilkes reasons that the horse, born in 1920, was named before acquiring its reputation after the 'swift and alert' drongo bird, and that its ill-starred career then caused its name to be taken up ironically.

However, Jim Lane of Walkerville, Victoria, believes that the World War II use of drongo by armed forces drill instructors to describe clumsy recruits developed independently of the horse, and was comparably influential in the popularising of the word. The drill instructors, he argues, took their inspiration directly from the drongo bird, whose chattering cackle gave the impression of a creature not entirely right in the head.

Alan Cohn, another correspondent who holds that the bird had the character and personality to capture public imagination without equine help, points to Graham Pizzey's A Field Guide to Birds in which the author notes that the red eye and raised feathers of the spangled drongo, Chibea bracteata, give it 'a slightly mad look'. Jim Lane cites Rigby's Every Australian Bird Illustrated as evidence of our fondness for derogatory references taken from ornithology: 'To call a man a "galah" is not to compliment himÉ To liken anyone to a member of a particular bird species would indicate that [he] is lacking in all requirements and is, in fact, bird-brained'.

 

 


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