"Pommy is supposed to be short for pomegranate. Pomegrante [sic], pronounced invariably pommygranate, is a near enough rhyme to immigrant, in a naturally rhyming country. Furthermore, immigrants are known in their first months, before their blood "thins down," by their round and ruddy cheeks. So we are told! Hence again, pomegranate, and hence Pommy. Let etymologists be appeased: it is the authorised derivation."

D H Lawrence: Kangaroo [complete with typo!]

Hey Paul - thanks for that - if you will check the thread about NAMES, you will see that my family name, Pomeranz, is possibly derived from pomegranate... it's interesting since, as a teenager, friends called my older brother 'Pom Pom' (and a good friend of mine decided to call me 'Lily Pom' - since my first name in French is translated 'lily').

Anyway - the pomegranate, one of the Seven Species of Eretz Yisrael, should you wish to know, is reputed to contain 613 seeds, the number of 'mitzvot' (or laws) in the Torah (the original 10 plus all the ones where the Torah says and G-d spoke to Moses and said, 'Go and tell my people...') - so, at Succot, when we use the pomegranate for decoration in the Succa and eat them (as they are then in season), we remember the Torah, the 613 mitzvot and, thus, our relationship with G-d.

As well, the pomegranate in a Jewish home has the same meaning as the pineapple has come to mean (at least in the USA) - and that is, as a sign of welcome!

Shoshannah

For more on the pomegranate and the Seven Species of Israel, go to: http://www.gezernet.co.il/tgs/florafauna/7species.html - a page I made as part of a project on the Flora of Israel for my tour guide class.

Lawrence was obsessed by bodies, wasn't he?

I was taught that POM meant "Prisoner of Mother England" in relation particularly to punishment by transportation to the Strine. Port Arthur is an interesting place NOW, but imagine how interesting it would have been 130-odd years ago ...

the OED speaketh: The most widely held derivation of this term, for which, however, there is no firm evidence, is that which connects it with pomegranate (see quots. 1923, 1963). A discussion of this and of other theories may be found in W. S. Ramson "Australian English". (the 1923 quot. is Lawrence's)

anyone have access to the Ramson?