larrikin
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈlæɹɪk(ɪ)n/
ipa: /ˈlɛɹəkən/
ipa: /ˈlæɹək(ə)n/
Forms: form: more larrikin
form: most larrikin
Etymology: Origin uncertain, possibly from *larick (Northern England) (an unattested variant of lark (“bird of the family Alaudidae; frolic or romp, some fun; prank; (East Suffolk, obsolete) unruly or wild person”, noun), from laverock (“(chiefly Northern England, Scotland, archaic) lark (bird)”); compare the variant forms lairock, larrock (chiefly Northern England), larick, larrick (chiefly Scotland)) + -kin (diminutive suffix). However, the Oxford English Dictionary notes that it is not clear why a word attested in the West Midlands (particularly Warwickshire and Worcestershire) and in Southwest England (Cornwall) would be derived from a word from Northern England.
Other suggestions include the following:
* The word is an Irish policeman’s pronunciation of larking (“engaging in careless adventure, frolicking; engaging in harmless pranking, sporting”), heard by a reporter in a Melbourne police court around 1870. The Oxford English Dictionary states there is no evidence of such an incident having been reported in the local newspapers of the time, and that in any case the word is attested earlier in Cornwall, England (since the early 19th century), and in Australia (at least from 1867: see the quotation).
* The first element of the word is from the name of an unknown Irishman named Larry.
The adjective is from an attributive use of the noun.
Senses: examples: text: Hoping my letter will have the desired effect of removing the larrikin nuisance especially in such a central portion of the town, […]
ref: 1870 November 22, Pro Bono Publico [pseudonym], “The larrikin nuisance. To the editor of the Advertiser.”, in The Geelong Advertiser, number 7505, Geelong, Vic.: […] [F]or the proprietors by Alfred Douglass, […], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 3, column 7:
text: A similar larrikin streak sends louts into city parks to shy stones at monuments and chip noses of statuary.
ref: 1947 August 18, “Editorial: The Vandal Streak”, in Alice Mabel Jackson, editor, The Australian Women’s Weekly, Sydney, N.S.W.: Consolidated Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 18, column 1:
text: […] [Edward] Dyson turned to the city, and in Fact'ry 'Ands (1906) concentrated upon the larrikin class which had developed in Melbourne since [Robert Percy] Whitworth first noted it.
ref: 1953, Colin Roderick, “Biographical Notes”, in Colin Roderick, editor, Australian Round-up: Stories from 1790 to 1950, Sydney, N.S.W.; London: Angus and Robertson, →OCLC, page 352:
text: ‘Larrikin gangs’ were a conspicuous feature of Sydney; and as a result of the selection acts, it was said, in the country perjury became a common-place in the lives of all.
ref: [1961], A[lan] G[eorge] L[ewers] Shaw, “The Calm before the Storm”, in The Story of Australia, 2nd edition, London: Faber and Faber, →OCLC, page 148:
text: Despite his skills as a singer and storyteller, Percy [Bird] sometimes felt like an outsider among the diggers, excluded by his own ideal and practice of moral manhood from the more larrikin masculinity that he perceived to be predominant.
ref: 1995, Alistair Thomson, “A Crisis of Masculinity? Australian Military Manhood in the Great War”, in Joy Damousi, Marilyn Lake, editors, Gender and War: Australians at War in the Twentieth Century (Studies in Australian History), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, part 2 (Masculinities), page 138:
glosses: Exhibiting the behaviour or characteristics of a larrikin (noun sense).
Of or relating to, or behaving like, a hooligan; hooliganistic, thuggish.
examples: text: Mungo [Wentworth] MacCallum is hardly typecast as the chronicler of the story of what has gone right and wrong about the business of immigration, regular and irregular, to this country but this most larrikin and cold-eyed of one-time Canberra chroniclers brings to this story all his wit and dryness and power of mind.
ref: 2002, Peter Craven, “Introduction”, in Peter Craven, editor, Quarterly Essay, volume 5, Melbourne, Vic.: Black Inc., Schwartz Publishing, →ISBN, →ISSN, →OCLC, page iii:
text: Another area was occupied by a group of guests with a clearly more larrikin style, and who very much belonged to the dominated fraction. […] The language used was rather different (more 'crude' in the second one), clothing style was different too (less trendy, and much cheaper clothes in the second group), as was appearance in general (heavier tattoos in the second group, more people with bad teeth, more of the men with the working-class goatee) and the interaction was generally more boisterous.
ref: 2006, Allon J. Uhlmann, “Family and Gender, and Society at Large”, in Family, Gender and Kinship in Australia: The Social and Cultural Logic of Practice and Subjectivity (Anthropology and Cultural History in Asia and the Indo-Pacific), Aldershot, Hampshire; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing, →ISBN, page 151:
text: "We're all a bit embarrassed by him [Steve Irwin]. He puts that image of Australia to the world – that larrikin attitude – and we're not all like that," says Milo Laing, 27, the manager of an Australian-themed bar on Shaftesbury Avenue. "But at the end of the day he did a lot of work for charities and he employed 550 people in his zoo. He grabbed life by the horns."
ref: 2006 September 5, Patrick Barkham, “‘It’s like a part of Australia has died’”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 06 Jul 2024:
glosses: Exhibiting the behaviour or characteristics of a larrikin (noun sense).
Playfully rebellious against and contemptuous of authority and convention; maverick.