blackfellow
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
blackfellow (plural blackfellows)
- (Australia, now usually considered offensive, ethnic slur) A (male) Australian Aborigine. [from 19th c.]
- Coordinate term: whitefellow
- 1842 February 16, The Inquirer, Perth, page 5, column 2:
- "Me like my country — no much too hot, no much too cold. By and bye, white fellow come — soldier-man come. White fellow say, this our land, that our land — ALL country our land. Black fellow say no! my country no white fellow's country, and black fellow take spear.
- 1985, Peter Carey, Illywhacker, Faber & Faber, published 2003, page 40:
- He was squatting on the ground like a blackfellow, quiet and still and cunning.
- 2000, Daryl Tonkin, Carolyn Landon, Jackson's Track: Memoir of a Dreamtime Place, page 256:
- It was as if the blackfellas were their property, and the Board could do with them as they saw fit.
- 2002, James Roberts, “At the Bar”, in Rebekah Clarkson, editor, Forked Tongues: A Delicious Anthology of Poetry and Prose, page 29:
- A blackfella and a whitefella are sitting at the bar. The whitefella says to the blackfella eh boss, whadya reckon?
The blackfella says since you ask, I consider it a metaphor of the historic case of the Coorong massacre of 1840.
- 2007, Noel Olive, Enough is Enough: A History of the Pilbara Mob[1], page 212:
- Most police officers had no blackfella cultural background, no knowledge of Aboriginal priorities in life, yet they were the power in the town.
Usage notes edit
- The word has been reclaimed to some extent by Indigenous Australians to describe themselves, but its use by other groups is now usually considered racially offensive.