waddy

See also: Waddy

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈwɒdi/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɒdi

Etymology 1

Unknown

Noun

waddy (plural waddies)

1. (colloquial) A cowboy.
   • 1992, Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses:

     This is how it was with the old waddies, aint it?

   • 1968, Charles Portis, True Grit:

     If I ever meet one of you Texas waddies that says he never drank from a horse track I think I will shake his hand and give him a Daniel Webster cigar.

Etymology 2

From Dharug wadi (“stick, weapon”).

Alternative forms

• waddie

Noun

waddy (plural waddies)

1. (Australia) A war club used by Aboriginal Australians; a nulla nulla.
   • 1839, William Mann, Six Years' Residence in the Australian Provinces, page 156:

     I should have told you that many of the Amity Paint tribe, which is more numerous than the other two settlement tribes, were deficient of spears and shields, having nothing but waddies and boomerangs.

   • 1840 May—August, Robert Montgomery Martin (editor), Van Diemen's Land, The Colonial Magazine and Commercial-maritime Journal, Volume 2, page 76,

     In the mean while women, children, and remote stock-keepers fell under the unerring spears or death-dealing waddies of an enemy, the first indication of whose appearance was consectaneous with the stroke that reft his victim of life.

   • 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 71:

     And in a free fight, the waddy, like an Irishman's shillaly, figures very prominently.

   • 2001, Richard Flanagan, Gould's Book of Fish, Vintage, published 2016, page 365:

     As I ran I glanced over my shoulder & saw the blackfellas beating Capois Death hard with their waddies, & they seemed to be trying to break the bones in each of his limbs.

   • 2008, Doreen Kartinyeri, Sue Anderson, Doreen Kartinyeri: My Ngarrindjeri Calling, page 20:

     The kids would copy the men to make their own cricket stumps, but no-one was allowed to touch Grandfather's special wood for making waddies.

2. (Australia) A piece of wood; a stick or peg; also, a walking stick.

Derived terms

• waddywood

Verb

waddy (third-person singular simple present waddies, present participle waddying, simple past and past participle waddied)

1. (Australia, transitive) To attack or beat with an Aboriginal war club.

Anagrams

• Dawdy