boong
English edit
Etymology edit
Suggested sources are
- Malay bung (“brother”),[1]
- Indonesian dialectal bung (“brother”)
- A New Guinea native language
- An Aboriginal Australian language.[2]
Previously the word Binghi was used widely in similar fashion to the present-day use of the term Negro for peoples of African ancestry; see titles from this booklist and also writings of Xavier Herbert (e.g. in Capricornia), for example.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
boong (plural boongs)
- (Australia, slang, offensive, ethnic slur) An Australian Aboriginal person.
- 1988, Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines[1], page 92:
- I heard Bruce tell one of the drinkers he'd bought a place in Queensland where you could ‘still call a Boong a Boong’.
- 2010, Peter Temple, The Broken Shore[2], page 82:
- ‘ […] I quit the feds because I didn't want to be a showpiece boong cop.’
- 2011, Linda Lee Rathbun, Tjuringa, unnumbered page:
- “Yeah,” he said, “them boongs are a useless lot. The sooner they all die off, the better.”
“And why is that?” Bill asked.
“The Abos are nothing but a pack of boozers. All they wanna' do is get pissed.” The man glared at his beer. “Useless, they are.”
- (Australia, slang, dated) A native of New Guinea or Malaysia.
- 1943, Australian Army, “Timor Souvenir”, in Khaki and Green: With the Australian Army at Home and Overseas, page 119:
- A couple of boongs came down and carried me up to the hut where our R.A.P. corporal was.
- 1998, August Ibrum K. Kituai, My Gun, My Brother: The World of the Papua New Guinea Colonial Police, 1920-1960[3], page 282:
- During the War the soldiers generally referred to Papua New Guineans as “Boongs,” a name also given to black Americans. It is not a nice word, but is fair to say that the Aussies held the boongs in quite some affection during the War.
- 2000, Prue Torney-Parlicki, Somewhere in Asia: War, Journalism and Australia's Neighbours 1941-75[4], page 48:
- [Department of Information cameraman Damien] Parer's views on mateship encompassed both the Papuans and the soldiers: at one point he wrote ‘“no boongs, no battle”, implying that natives and diggers were equal partners in their fight against the Japanese.’71
Alternative forms edit
Synonyms edit
- (Asian or dark-skinned person): Fuzzy Wuzzy Angel
- (aboriginal): abo, Jacky
See also edit
- List of ethnic slurs on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
References edit
- ^ 1959, Xavier Herbert, Seven Emus, 2003, page 5 — The term boong is originally Malayan, meaning “brother”, but it doesn't mean anything like that in Australian usage.
- ^ 1988, The Bulletin, Issues 5617-5625, page 121 — They would doubtless have been amused to learn that in New Guinea, where the term "boong" originated, it means "brother" and has a kinship with the Indonesian "bung" and Thursday Island's "binghi".
Anagrams edit
Gilbertese edit
Noun edit
boong
Vietnamese edit
Pronunciation edit
Etymology 1 edit
Noun edit
boong
Etymology 2 edit
Adjective edit
boong
- (onomatopoeia) bell-like resounding sound
Etymology 3 edit
Noun edit
(classifier cái) boong