Here's from Google searching:
"*NOTE: The Music-Lovers Encyclopedia by Rupert Hughes (all editions from 1914 to 1956) has this entry:
zzxjoanw (shaw) Maori. 1. Drum. 2. Fife. 3. Conclusion.
According to Philip Cohen in Word Ways (Nov. 1976), there are several problems with this entry, notably the fact that it's an impossible Maori word, both in spelling and pronunciation. Cohen suspects that Hughes made up the word as a joke. In his book, Earth, David Brin has a Maori character playing a zzxjoanw. Asked about this, Brin said that he'd gotten the word from Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary [Dan Tilque].
Anne Woodley, who is from New Zealand, agrees that ZZXJOANW is not a Maori word. She writes, "There are no Z, X or J in the Maori language - also the the phonetics aren't right for the Maori, or indeed any Pacific Island language, all of which come from the same family."
...That's pretty much what you all have been saying all along. And I don't think you understand what I've been saying...and this is it:
Could there be the possibility that Mrs. B, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, could have been correct? Could she have been privy to information we don't have?
I'm just looking at possibilities in the face of apparent impossibility. I'm definitely not saying she was categorically correct, come hell or high water. I'm a lot more interested in why someone who was looking for and cataloguing 'preposterous' words would have included this one, no matter how preposterous it appears to be on the surface. Rather than throw the baby out with the bath water, I'd like to know how this baby got into her lexicon. What was her source?
And I'm not smoking anything, for the record.
