I just got asked what this meant. A search (admittedly on Altavista) revealed that it is only mentioned on New Zealand web pages.
Does anyone else understand what it means, and can anybody tell me what its origins are and history is?
Ta!
Two ideas, neither of which I have time to research:
1.)(dumb, so I'm putting it first)is there such a thing
as a bore ax? That could be used threateningly?
2.) borax is, I think, a soft mineral, so maybe poking the borax might be a mining-related term. Could cause a great stir, and a cloud of confusion could arise.
Found this through googling:
http://www.artistwd.com/joyzine/australia/strine/p.htmIt says:
poke borack/borax - tease, make fun of, ridicule, especially covertly.The definition is correct, but it doesn't really help!
Borak is apparently an Aboriginal word for 'fun, ridicule'; so 'to poke borak at'.
Trust you to think of and find something like that,
Nick-o. Good on yer, as they say. Bet yer right, too!
Trust you to think of and find something like that,
Nick-o. Good on yer, as they say. Bet yer right, too.
No, I don't think he is. I found a similar reference (now lost again and I can't remember the search term that produced it), but the writer felt that it was an unlikely connection. A couple of other things he wrote seemed pretty authoritative to me in relation to Strine.
From memory, the writer believed that it wasn't a word that English-speaking Australians would have picked up from an Aboriginal language. Typically these are words for which there is no existing English equivalent or which are more apt.
I would be inclined to agree with you and your source. Words associated with Aborigines are not necessarily native: tucker, walkabout, damper, and I have grave doubts about gin 'woman' since Aboriginal words aren't monosyllabic. But it is always possible that they could have borrowed a word for 'fun'
My source is the Pocket Oxford Dictionary, which has an appendix of Australian/NZ terms. It laconically marks it "[Ab.]". This is not much use for tracking down which one of two hundred odd languages it might come from.
Well, NicholasW, I
still want to know where it came from! So, any other ideas from anyone will be welcome.
Okay, in guise of making a cup of tea I have sneaked on tippy-toe to the library and found some answers and questions.
The word is first cited from 1845, as a definition, borak, gammon, nonsense. This suggests the author is glossing a native word. Then come various instances of 'poking borak', in quotes as a colloquialism. The first occurrence of 'borax' found is only 1945.
The OED suggests a connexion with 'barrack', but I think they're wrong. The earliest uses of 'barrack' are all in the modern sense of 'call out, support', not particularly closer to 'borak'.
Whilst I think the "borak" explanation sounds close to the mark, thought I might cloud the issue while I still could.
A major use of borax is (as Jackie says) in mining or, to be more correct, as a flux for the smelting of mineral ores, particularly gold. It's not impossible to imagine a hopeful prospector poking the borax and mineral concentrate in the crucible to get an idea of how much gold he'll have once it's poured into the mould to make an ingot.
Another idea is that this may have some reference to an old time laboratory process that uses a bead of borax, a blow pipe and a bunsen burner to identify minerals. As I recall from high school chemistry (25 years ago now), a sample of the finely ground mineral is placed on a carbon block next to some borax powder. Air is blown through the flame via the pipe to melt the borax, which is then poked onto the mineral sample, engulfing it. The composite bead thus formed is collected in a loop of fine wire, held to the flame and subjected to an air blast. The colour of the flame that comes off the bead is indicative of the mineral present - the basis of spectroscopy and Fire Assaying (I think).
Phew
stales
Thank's Shanks! I learned a thing or two from Isaac Asimov's World of Cabon, and World of Nitrogen, but i never took a class in chemisty beyond HS Chemistry (more than 30 years ago!)--which while i liked it, i remember more as a math class than anything else-- I never knew a use for Borax--(well aside from washing) 20 Mule Team is still a brand of Borax available to US consumers, and they used to sponser a Western-- I never could understand why someone would brave the Death Valley desert for a bit of laundry soap.
Maybe it has to do with frogs, as in "Brek-ek-kek Borax".
<<waiting for tsuwm at this point???>>
I had nothing to contribute to this thread, but here's the obligatory pastes from OED, fwiw at this late date:
borak - Austral. and N.Z. slang. [Aboriginal Australian. Cf. barrack v.2]
Nonsense, humbug; chaff, banter; esp. in to poke (the) borak, to make or poke fun.
1845 T. McCombie Arabin 273 Borack, gammon, nonsense. 1882 Bulletin (Sydney) 9 Sept. 9 A smart fellow was ‘poking borak’ at them, and asked, ‘Is the snow in Japan the same as it is in Tasmania?’ 1898 in M. Davitt Life & Progr. Australasia xxxv. 192 A jest is ‘poking borac’. 1904 Blackw. Mag. June 832/1 One of the crowd was poking borak and said something pretty bad to him at the beginning. 1916 J. B. Cooper Coo-oo-ee ix. 113 At the same time he wondered whether Nipper was not ‘pokin' borak’ at him. 1944 J. H. Fullarton Troop Target iv. 34 You wouldn't be poking the borax, would you?
borax - var. borak. {they don't connect this with the other borax at all}
barrack - v.2 {a separate entry from the military barrack}
[app. orig. Australian (? alteration of borak), but E.D.D. cites barrack ‘to brag, to be boastful of one's fighting powers’, barracker ‘a braggart’, and barracking ‘bragging, boastfulness’ from northern Ireland.]
intr. To shout jocular or derisive remarks or words of advice as partisans against a person, esp. a person, or side collectively, engaged in a contest. Also, with for, to support (a player, speaker, etc.) (esp. by shouting). (Said of a section of the crowd of spectators, orig. Australian.) Also transf. b. trans. To shout in this way at (a player, speaker, etc.). Hence "barracking vbl. n. and ppl. a.; also "barracker n., one who barracks.
joe (waiting for dogot) friday
N.B. - truth be told, I didn't expect to find this one in the OED; just goes to show....
Helen, borax requires evaporation to form; thus deposits will only be found in deserts.
Now: (forgive me, Jackie, Father S.).
What, pray tell, is that all about?
Well, the OED, while not always authoritative, usually gets most things right. I still find it difficult to believe it came from borak, but, who knows?
I rather fancy the explanation of the use of borax for gold assaying purposes, but ...
But as you see from the quotations, and which I earlier mentioned for just this reason, 'borax' first occurs in 1944, a hundred years after 'borak'.
When I earlier mentioned the OED's reference to 'barrack' and said I couldn't see a connexion, I refrained from adding details. They say to see the EDD. So I did. There's a Northern Ireland word 'barrack' meaning 'boast, esp. of one's fighting skill'.
The original meaning of the word 'barrack' = 'cantonment' is a soldier's tent or booth. Ultimate origin unknown -- Spanish, from unknown earlier language (OED suggests Celtic and one or two others). But that could give rise to 'boast, swagger like a soldier'.
On the other hand there is also 'bark' extended to various noisy senses, including 'crow, boast' recorded from WYorks in the EDD. I don't know whether it's phonetically plausible to derive 'barrack' from 'bark'.
In reply to:
borax requires evaporation to form; thus deposits will only be found in deserts.
Well borax is a salt-- but there are salt deposits to be found in non desert areas, presumably the areas were deserts in the distant past– or they are dried lake beds from salt lakes.
There are salt mines in NY (Watkin's Glen area– well known to auto race fans.) The salt deposits are deep underground, and are mined by pumping down water, extracting the brine, and evaporating the water. Watkin's Glen, even if you have never been there is not a desert or even close to one.
And there are solid salt "quarries" in what is now southern Poland–still not "played out" even though mining has been going on since the Roman's time. I don't think of Poland has large extensive deserts-- though like NY state, it might have some small deserts or desert like areas.
So salt mining is not only done in the desert. I just never had any idea of what borax was used for besides washing. I actually prefer hydrated sodium carbonate to hydrated sodium borate for cleaning. (Washing soda--not Borax) and for really tough jobs, tri-sodium phosphate– but use of tri-sodium is restricted.
3) Oh nothing...'S'ok, my noted (notated? notable? notorious??) friend.
I've missed posts myself, without quite knowing how. I think it's to do with maverick's complaint about the 'New'
icon being capricious. I'm glad Godot caught up with you.
I'm still waiting.
>I missed ofTroy,s earlier comment
nice 'inverted apostrophe', musick!
"If you want to know the time, ask a policeman." For etymologies without that gnomic "[Ab.]", ask a modern dictionary. The Oxford Concise Australian Dictionary lists borak as (i) adv. (obs.) no, not; (ii) the sense 'fun' we already know about. Australian pidgin, from Wathawurung burag 'no, not'.
QEI.
'borax' first occurs in 1944, a hundred years after 'borak'.
Well, I had my doubts about this, and subsequently found the following in "Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry, 6th edition, Electronic Release, 1999":
The Arabic word for borax, baurach, is found in old manuscripts from ancient Persia and Arabia dating 2000 years ago. ... At the end of the 13th century Marco Polo brought borax from Mongolia to Europe. This became the primary European source for use as a soldering and enameling agent.
Frankly, I believe borak, in the course of time, got assimilated to borax (because the latter is more widely known) rather than the other way round.
'borax' in the sense of 'borak' first occurs in 1944, a hundred years after 'borak'.
Furthermore, I have now researched who the Wathawurung were, and have to share this with you all. They lived in the area west of Melbourne, from Ballarat to the coast. Ballarat lies by Lake Wendouree. Both names are Wathawurung. The story is that the lake got its name when William Yuille, who pastoralist who founded the Ballaarat (sic) station, asked a native woman its name and she said wendaaree, 'go away'.