EDITORIALWe dedicate this issue to the memory ofNew Zealand’s most accomplished, mostdurable, and most loved lexicographer, DrHarold William Orsman CNZM(1928–2002), known to many simply as‘Harry O’.

The inaugural NZWords included the textof an address by Stuart Johnston at aVictoria University function marking thepublication of Harry Orsman’s Dictionaryof New Zealand English in 1997. Here just afew years on in sadder times we printProfessor Johnston’s warm and eloquenttribute to his friend and colleague,delivered at the Requiem Mass for Harry inWellington on 13 June this year.

In his regular contribution ‘From theCentre’ Graeme Kennedy also writes ofOrsman’s generous and invaluable legacyto New Zealand lexicography and to theNew Zealand Dictionary Centrespecifically.

As editor both of the first New Zealanddictionary (the Heinemann in 1979) andof the colossal work on historical principlesthat brought such deserved acclaim in hisfinal years, Harry O’s own place in historyas pre-eminent recorder of NewZealanders’ ways with words is assured.

Much interesting work on New Zealandvocabulary and vocabularies continues tobe done, as evidenced by the three othercontributions in this issue, all of which wecan be sure Harry would have read withmuch pleasure. For all who venture intothe field of New Zealand words HarryOrsman’s lexicographical endeavours willbe an inspiration and aprofound influence fora very long time tocome.

Tony DeversonEditor, NZWordsAssociate Director,NZDC

It is a privilege to havebeen asked to speakabout Harry Orsman. Ihave been trying tobring some order to thethoughts and feelingsthat crowded in on

learning of his death, by reflecting onsome of the meanings of the word‘character’, as one might find them setout by a dictionary-maker like Harry.

In the literature curriculum thatHarry and I studied, an interesting by-waywas an unfamiliar 17th-century genre,that of the Character books: -collectionsof brief sketches of various types ofperson. At their best these Characterswere crisp, witty, single paragraphs, full ofinsights from the writer’s knowledge ofparticularly memorable individuals. I canthink of so many titles under which apresent-day writer could evoke the multi-faceted, multi-talented personality ofHarry Orsman. Some of the 17th-centurytitles look promising: A Down-rightScholar, A Modest Man, A Good OldMan. How easy it would be to fashion theparagraph on A Family Man. Or theCharacter of a True Friend. For me thelatter would be triggered by memoriesfrom 45 years ago, when we were bothnew householders, breaking in rawsections in Upper Hutt, and sharing thefrustrations of the do-it-yourselfchallenged, and the hazards of gettinginto town in time to take 8 a.m. tutorials.I can think of so many acts of generosityand support from Harry over the years.He had so many friends who could saythe same.

Many other Character sketches couldreflect our experience of Harry—AStoryteller, for instance, although afurther sketch would be needed, that of ATeller of Inconclusive Stories, given theway Harry was prone to interrupt himselfwith uproarious asides that swept him offtrack. You all have your favourite Harrystories, and will have a chance to sharethem after Mass. I loved the way that, fifty

years on, Harry would still convulsehimself with mirth recalling his exploitswith those unwieldy early tape-recordersas he travelled the country collecting—and then sometimes erasing—oralevidence for his study of New Zealandlanguage. How much would need to bepacked into a sketch, inspired by Harry,entitled A Patient Scholar, or onecapturing the essence of A Glad Teacher,alive with the spirit of Chaucer’s Clerk:‘gladly would he learn and gladly teach’.Behind the sketch of A Compleat Editorcould lie Harry’s careful crafting of thereports of five royal commissions chairedby his good friend Thaddy McCarthy.

How fully Harry exemplified thecharacter of An Oral Historian. Or that ofA Prodigious Reader. Many of hisstudents and colleagues could flesh outthe sketch of A Wise Mentor. He had aremarkable gift for helping students whohad got themselves into seeminglyhopeless academic and administrativetangles. There was no stylised tableau likethat of a kindly passer-by helping a lamedog slide over a stile; Harry’s way was tolift them well clear of the obstacle, thengive the impediment a good kick or twofor being in the way. Behind the sketch ofA Generous Collaborator could lieHarry’s unstinted assistance to theeditors of the supplements to the OED,and of the Australian National Dictionary,and to many others. Think what could beglanced at in the character sketch of AMocker of Vanities. What rich memorieswould surface in recalling Harry as AnOrganiser of Conferences!

I could go on nominating such titlesfor Character sketches illuminated by ourknowledge of Harry, and you would notethe paradoxes and striking contrastsbetween them. I would simply enlist onHarry’s behalf Walt Whitman’s famouswords:

Do I contradict myself?Very well then I contradict myself,(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

NZWORDS

AUGUST 2002NUMBER 6

P U B L I S H E D A N N U A L LY

THE NEW ZEALAND DICTIONARY CENTRE

A joint project between VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF WELLINGTON

and OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

HARRY ORSMAN

AN ADDRESS GIVEN BY STUART JOHNSTON AT THECATHOLIC CHURCH OF ST TERESA,

KARORI, WELLINGTON, 13 JUNE 2002

1

PAGE 2 NZWORDS AUGUST 2002

Turning to another richly evocativesense of the word, I reflect on the waysin which Harry was ‘a bit of a character’.Or, in the vernacular he delighted in, areal dag of a joker. There was somethinginescapably roguish in his personality.We can all vividly recall encounters withhis overflowing zest for life, hisirrepressible sense of fun, his reluctanceto conform to the bland pieties of socialdecorum, his impeccable sense ofwrong—or right—timing on formaloccasions, for choosing to share, tooloudly for comfort, some subversiveinsight.

The more I came to know Harry overalmost fifty years—and I defer to DesHurley, Maurice McIntyre, and FelixKane, who knew Harry at St Pat’s,Silverstream; to Alistair Campbell, whomet him at Weir House; and to othershere who knew him for longer—themore I realised that what he had donewas to create a highly colourful persona,a ‘character’, also confusingly calledHarry Orsman, which he played hardwhenever he was sufficiently provoked—by the crassness of some figures inauthority, by the dullness of complacentconformity, or, most of all, by his finelytuned detection of unfairness orinjustice. Those who saw Harry only inone of his more extravagant moments asa lord of misrule could make the gravemistake of thinking that this was the onlyHarry.

As age and declining health tooktheir toll he put aside that rumbustiouscharacter. Perhaps the provocations justreceded—so that everyone saw, all thetime, the gentler Harry whom thoseclosest to him had known, had admired,and had loved for many years. What wasit they had known? If I may venture tospeak for his colleagues, it was surely anextraordinary gift for friendship, aconstantly enlivening wit, a remarkablesensitivity to the needs and difficulties ofothers, and unfailingly generous interestin and support for their work. Thatbreadth of interest and encouragementreached out to people working in otherfields, and not just in academic circles.

In the volume of essays assembled inhonour of Harry I pointed to one of hisgreatest qualities: ‘his gift for putting thedecisions and ideas of others to the testof common sense and humanity’, forsaving us sometimes from our worst

selves. That volume of essays and poemsby twenty-eight of his colleagues andformer students—the Festschrift OfPavlova, Poetry and Paradigms—istestimony of a rare kind to the hold hehad taken on their minds and hearts.

I like one dictionary’s definition ofthe final sense of ‘character’ that shapesmy regard for Harry. ‘Character: moralstrength, especially if highly developedor evident.’ My focus in reflecting onthis aspect is here—Harry’s greatDictionary of New Zealand English. I do notneed to traverse the whole story of hisjourney towards this high point of hisscholarly career—it has become so wellknown. The dictionary itself in so manyof its citations traces the growth of hisfascination with New Zealand Englishfrom his childhood, ‘down Havelock’,onwards. As Harry was fond of saying,the project that began as a PhD thesis in1951 rather got out of hand, and tookthe next forty-six years to complete.

It has been praised and honoured asa triumph of learning, as a masterworkof scholarship. I want to honour andpraise it today as a triumph of character,of determination, of moral strengthhighly developed and plainly evident.How easy it would have been throughthose long years for him to let go of thevision, to have found any number ofreasons for abandoning the project andletting the accumulated materials gatherdust. What character there was in hissense of responsibility to his material, tothe discipline he served, to those whohad helped him, to the university heloved. I remain in awe of the way, in thelatter stages of his work on thedictionary, that Harry took hold of theshifts in computer technology, seizedfunding opportunities, recruitedexcellent assistants, and turned hislargely solo endeavour into a large-scaleteam project, led with flair andexecutive brilliance.

How marvellous it is that in the pastnine years, from the year of Harry’sretirement from the university, therehave been so many festive occasions onwhich we have been able to see Harry’sdelight, both at the completion of hisheroic task and at the recognition hehad received. There was the launchingof Of Pavlova, Poetry and Paradigms in1993, then in July 1997 the formallaunching of the DNZE by Sir Michael

Hardie Boys at Government House. Afew months later there was the publicinstalling of Harry as Doctor ofLiterature at the university’s graduationceremony (marked, very unusually, by astanding ovation from the largeassembly of his academic colleagues),followed a few weeks later by hisappointment as a Companion of theNew Zealand Order of Merit. We knowhow much Harry enjoyed this mark ofrecognition—as he told a reporter, hewas not only rapt, he was glad-wrapped.Then in 1998 he was awarded theMontana Medal for the non-fiction bookof the year.

He leaves a rich legacy, here in thisvolume, which will continue to inform,entertain, stimulate, and challenge formany decades to come. Harry’s giftingof his intellectual property rights in thedictionary and the transferring of hisrich store of research evidence—farmore than could be directly used in thevolume—have become the basis of theongoing collaboration between Harry’spublishers, OUP, and VictoriaUniversity, in the New ZealandDictionary Centre, which is responsiblefor maintaining and updating the DNZEdatabase and for future revisions of it,for conducting research on NewZealand language, and for preparingother dictionaries and relatededucational materials.

He leaves another legacy, intangiblebut immensely pervasive: the memorieshis friends, colleagues, and students willbe buoyed up by as they have occasion toreflect, with enduring respect andgratitude, on all that Harry meant intheir lives. Already messages are comingin from Harry’s international colleaguesat the headquarters of the Oxford EnglishDictionary and elsewhere that movinglyexpress the loss they feel.

I have spoken of Harry as friends andcolleagues have known him. I cannothope to draw close to what his deathmust mean to Elizabeth and herchildren and their families. May I simplyoffer them, on behalf of you all, and ofmany more in many other places in NewZealand and in other countries, our loveand sympathy; and the hope that ouruniting with them and accompanyingthem in this Requiem liturgy will help tocomfort and sustain them.

PAGE 3 NZWORDS AUGUST 2002

It is the borrowings from te reo Maori thatmost obviously distinguish the New ZealandEnglish vocabulary from that of othervarieties of the language. Although themajority of these borrowings are used in astraightforward, literal sense, there is also asubversive undercurrent of use that draws onthe Maori language to create a uniquely NewZealand humour. Quite possibly thisundercurrent emerged early in New Zealand’spost-contact history. This article discusses thatuse, and groups examples according to theword formation process used.

Humour is, of course, very much in theeye of the beholder. Dictionary makers mayfudge the issue of defining humour byapplying the descriptive label joc. In thisdiscussion, the term will be taken toencompass the wry, the clever, and thecreative. Sometimes, it needs to be noted,attempts at humour can be offensive. Whatmay be acceptable intra-group is notacceptable inter-group. A Maori comediansuch as Billy T. James could be celebrated forhis linguistic humour, but similar jokes couldbe deemed offensive and racist when used bynon-Maori.

Certainly, humour is something morethan the generator of a belly laugh—or anunappreciative groan. Diana Witchel, writingin the Listener in 1992, commented on onesuch failed attempt at humour.

At least everyone else looked professionalbeside Bert, whose idea of a Kiwi joke is tosay: ‘Kia Ora, Heinz and Worcestershire toyou all!’ Seeing what passes for lightentertainment in the rest of the worldmakes you grateful we don’t have anyhere.

Despite Witchel’s gloomy assessment ofthe situation, there is plenty of evidence thathumorous word play is alive and well in NewZealand. In New Zealand English, both Maoriand Pakeha speakers use borrowings from theMaori language with humorous intent, andthe examples used in this article derive fromboth. Indeed, with examples drawn fromwritten sources it is often impossible toidentify the author.

Creating HybridsThe available data suggests that NewZealanders principally rely on two word

formation processes when attempting thisform of humour. Possibly the most commonmethod of creating a humorous word isthrough hybridisation; that is, creating a termthat contains an English-language elementand a Maori-language component, with thenew term being analogous to either a Maorior an English model.

Examples of hybrids created by analogywith a Maori original are the place namesPoofanui (for the up-market resort ofPauanui) and Tigertigerumu (forParaparaumu during the 2002 New ZealandGolf Open, which featured Tiger Woods).There is a potato variety called Waitangy, andin Otago the locals are alleged to practiseScottytanga, the key component of whichappears to be the free borrowing of otherpeople’s possessions. Not all such creationsare proper nouns. A farmer’s march onParliament was labelled a cock-oi (cf. hikoi),and from the Porirua area come reports ofthe weather being makachilly (after makariri).

Analogies with English-language originalsare also to be found. One trouble-plaguedinter-island ferry was rechristened theAratanic by Wellingtonians, Waiouru’s climateis celebrated in the moniker Waiberia, and

MAORI LOANWORDS AND NEW ZEALAND HUMOUR

JOHN MACALISTER

Own the World’s Greatest Dictionary...Oxford University Press offers you the unique opportunity to own the world’s greatest dictionary for less than halfits recommended retail price! Defining over a million words, in twenty volumes, The Oxford English Dictionaryis the ultimate authority on the English language—and now it can be yours at a fraction of its normal price.

International Scope✔ Covers words from

across the English-speaking world—fromNorth America toAustralasia

✔ Includes words takeninto English from otherlanguages

Breadth and Depthof Coverage

✔ Provides in-depthinformation on overhalf a million words

✔ Offers the best in etymological analysis

✔ No other dictionary gives you more: 20 volumes, 21,730pages, 62.6 kilos, 291,500 entries, 47,100 main entries forobsolete words, 2,436,600 quotations, 139,900pronunciations, and 219,800 etymologies!!!

Authoritative✔ The internationalauthority on the Englishlanguage

A Unique HistoricalRecord

✔ An unsurpassed guideto the meaning, history, andpronunciation of words—both present and past ✔ Traces the usage ofwords through 2.5 million

quotations from a wide range of international Englishlanguage sources—from classic literature and specialistperiodicals to film scripts, wills, and cookery books

Oxford English Dictionary...the last word on words

RRP NZ$6995.00

NZ$3250!

Hardback 0-19-861186-2 20 Vol Set

TO ORDER:

Contact Oxford University Press Customer Service:Free-Phone: 0800 442 502 • Free-Fax: 0800 442 503

Email: cs@oup.com.au

PAGE 4 NZWORDS AUGUST 2002

there are no prizes for guessing the locationof Rotovegas. Another interesting creation isMaussie:

‘I call myself a Maussie—a Maori Aussie.I’ve got a big moko tattooed on my chest.’

Other examples are Whetugate, Tukugate,and that Auckland institution, the Kai Cart.

The same process was at work in thecreation of a list of the Top Five Maori Filmsof All Time, circulated by e-mail, thatincluded Four Hangis and a Tangi and Fearand Loathing in Rotovegas.

A slightly different method ofhybridisation is illustrated by such terms askina-cut, hui-hopper, mana-muncher, and thefashionable shoe, the pipi-picker. In theseexamples, the first three of which appear tobe of Maori invention, a new compound wordis created from existing lexical items, onedrawn from each of the two contributinglanguages.

Playing With SoundNew coinings other than those arising throughthe hybridisation process appear to beinfrequent contributors to the lexicon of NewZealand humour; tukus as a synonym for‘underpants’, for instance, does not appear tohave caught on. A second process, homophony,however, contributes substantially to thecorpus of examples, although it must beadmitted that the sound similarity is oftenloose. Thus, another of the invented filmtitles, There’s Something About Maui,Taranaki’s inter-iwi sports competition, PaWars, and a shop named Moazark. Similarly,the opera singer Kiri Te Kanawa’s name hasgiven rise to some creative, perhapsapocryphal, restaurant dishes—Curry TeKanawa, Kiri Te Kumara, and Kiwi Te Kanawa,a kiwifuit mousse.

The similarity between paua and ‘power’has also provided opportunities for such wordplay, with The Paua and the Glory by A.K.Grant and Tom Scott being one example andthe pseudo-protest slogan paua to the peopleanother.

A personal favourite has to be thesuggestion that Wellington’s stadium situatedbeside the railway lines be named Te Kapa, for‘with appropriate decoration (a thin linedrawn round it near the top), the stadiumcould be reminiscent of the old railwaysteacup’. Te Kapa would have provided anironic counterbalance to the gravitas of TePapa.

In this same category can be included ajoke that went around some years ago. Thejoke works, at least in part, because NewZealanders have an awareness that syllable-timing is a feature of the Maori language.

What’s Maori for a car radio aerial?Te kotanga.

A similar example, included in a recenttelevision documentary, The Last Laugh, was:

What did the Maoris say to Captain Cook?Park here (pronounced he-ah).

Both of these jokes originated with Maorispeakers, but become less acceptable whenrepeated by non-Maori. Another example,which was almost certainly a Pakeha creationand which would today be regarded as indubious taste, is this riddle from the TaranakiPunch of 1861.

Why is the Maori like a dutiful son?Because he is fond of his pa.

Sound similarities also explain pairingssuch as hui-ing and fro-ing, too much hui andnot enough do-ey, and the hoo-ha over puha,as well as new creations along the lines ofkoru-tastrophe and, another personalfavourite, Te Ware Whare (where everyonegets a bargain).

One-Off HumourMany of the examples of humour arising fromthe interaction of te reo Maori and Englishshare one or more of the followingcharacteristics, characteristics that might limitan item’s potential for assimilation into theNew Zealand English lexicon: they aregenerally found in spoken New ZealandEnglish rather than written; they are nonceformations; they are specific to particularevents; they are regional; and often theirintention appears to be to disparage, to makefun of someone or something or somewhere.

A considerable number of the examplescited above are therefore likely to beephemeral creations, and not to become apermanent feature of the New ZealandEnglish lexicon. There are, on the otherhand, certain methods of lexical generationthat appear to be well utilised means ofadding humour to the lexicon. Often, but notalways, they result in the creation of furtherhumorous hybrids.

Productive Place NamesThe first is the connotations attached to ahandful of place names sometimes used tohumorous effect. Place names are, of course,the most commonly encountered borrowingfrom te reo Maori into New Zealand English.Perhaps the most productive among them, forhumorous purposes, is Taranaki, which, inThe Dictionary of New Zealand English, providesten such collocations, including Taranakibedside light, Taranaki salute, Taranakisunshine, Taranaki topdressing, Taranakiviolin, and Taranaki wool, as well as the iconicTaranaki gate. To these could be added themore recent Taranaki wind (i.e. natural gas).The abbreviated form the ’naki would also bea candidate for the descriptive label joc.

Eketahuna (sometimes spelt Ekatahuna) isanother place name often used to raise asmile, evoking as it does both quintessentialrural middle-New Zealandness and the urbannotion of the ultimate in backblockedness.

The huge response when Richard [Long]was dropped … Mr and Mrs Eketahunasaw it as a divorce in the family.

Dateline 1972: Arthur Hoggins, a 21-year-old plumber’s mate from Eketahuna, waslast night named the country’s first

Minister of Youth. His appointment … wasannounced by the leader of the new NiceGovernment, Mr Happy Smiles …

Another place name borrowed fromMaori and sometimes used to humorouseffect is that of the Auckland suburbRemuera, as in the nickname for the suburb’sallegedly ubiquitous four-wheel-drive vehicles,the Remuera tractor or the Remuera taxi.

At a different end of the socio-economicscale, Porirua has also acquired certainconnotations, as in Porirua briefcase, apossibly offensive term for that 1980sphenomenon, the ghettoblaster.

Further examples might include Lynn ofTawa, the imaginary Waikikamukau, and thebad taste Waiouru blonde, which, in additionto the meaning provided by Harry Orsman’sDictionary of Modern New Zealand Slang, is alsoreputed to be a sheep.

NgatiThe second well-accepted method is the useof the iwi prefix Ngati to convey a communityof interest, as in Ngati Cappucino, Ngati KoruClub, Ngati Nimby, and Ngati We-Were-Here-Firsts, described as ‘the holidaymakers who’vebeen trekking over the hills for years’ to Piha.Other examples, placed in a Maori militarycontext, are Ngati Walkabout and NgatiKaupois, a rendering of ‘cowboys’.

Adapting IdiomsThe third process that is likely to produceadditions to the lexicon is that of substitutinga Maori element for an English element in anEnglish-language idiom, particularly whenthat idiom is fixed. For instance, ‘to put thecat among the pigeons’ becomes to put thecat among the kereru, or ‘as dead as a dodo’as dead as a moa. Knock me down with amere, on the other hand, is likely to have beena one-off, as is kapa haka to Seatoun’s ears.

Other examples of the adaptation of fixedidioms are to suck the kumara, tryingsomeone in a kumara court, and describingsomeone as being either a pain in the puku ora couple of kumara short of a hangi.

Not all idioms are fixed, however, andthose that are not also have the opportunity tobe adapted to humorous effect, althoughthese have less likelihood of entering thelexicon. One such example is the newspaperheadline Have taiaha, will travel.

Looking AheadThis type of humour can operate successfullyonly in a New Zealand context. The fact thatit exists and that it is appreciated is anindication of the degree to which borrowingsfrom te reo Maori have entered New ZealandEnglish and the degree to which NewZealanders have at least a passive knowledgeof the Maori language. What the effect onNew Zealand humour of these characteristicsof the language situation will be in the futureis impossible to predict, but it is safe to assumethat there will be many more occasions tosmile, to laugh, and, inevitably, to groan.

John Macalister is a PhD research fellow at the NewZealand Dictionary Centre at Victoria University ofWellington.

PAGE 5 NZWORDS AUGUST 2002

The New Zealand DictionaryCentre is jointly funded by OxfordUniversity Press and VictoriaUniversity of Wellington toresearch all aspects of NewZealand English and to publishNew Zealand dictionaries andother works.

MAILBAGThe Editor of NZWords welcomes readers’

letters and other contributions on theirrecent observations of New Zealand usage,

both positive and negative. Please write to:

Tony Deverson, Editor, NZWordsDepartment of English, University of Canterbury

Private Bag 4800, Christchurch Fax: (03) 364 2065Email: a.deverson@engl.canterbury.ac.nz

�

Graeme KennedyDirector, New Zealand

Dictionary CentreSchool of Linguistics and

Applied Language Studies,Victoria University of Wellington

PO Box 600 Wellington Email: nzdc@vuw.ac.nz

Fax: (03) 463 5604

Harry Orsman, doyen of lexicographers ofNew Zealand English, died on 10 June 2002,in his seventy-fourth year. For those who hadthe privilege of working closely with him,Harry was a loyal, generous, intelligent, andwitty colleague who was the life and soul ofany discussion, whether it involved just acouple of people or a couple of dozen. Thislife and character were movingly portrayed inthe eulogy read at Harry’s funeral byProfessor Stuart Johnston, which is includedelsewhere in this issue of NZWords.

More widely, Harry Orsman will beremembered as the scholar who was so intouch with New Zealand, its landscape,history, and people that through hislexicographical work he has helped to definewhat it means to be a New Zealander. Mostparticularly he recorded the development anduse of English in this country, and broughtthis scholarly work together in the publicationof his monumental Dictionary of New ZealandEnglish, published by Oxford University Pressin 1997.

Reflecting New ZelandSociety

Much has been written about the DNZE, howit developed through fifteen drafts to reflectNew Zealand institutions, social history, andsense of identity, and how it emerged as aproduct of Harry’s engagement with anincreasingly bicultural and multifacetedsociety. The DNZE is astonishing for its level ofdetail, ranging from a coverage of naturalhistory, which included forty-six kinds of grassunderpinning a rural economy, to the fifteencolumns of the dictionary devoted to fern orthe sixteen pages devoted to bush. The socialhistory was treated just as thoroughly. Hismarvellous instinct for New Zealandismsencompassed not only colourful slang but alsothe ordinary. One of my favourites is hisdiscovery that the use of carry in the sense ofland carrying a certain number of animals tothe acre could be first attested in NewZealand.

Although the DNZE was the culminationof Harry Orsman’s work as a lexicographer,his scholarship had earlier found an audiencein a series of smaller popular works. Theseincluded his two editions of the HeinemannNew Zealand Dictionary (1979, 1989) and theNew Zealand Dictionary edited jointly withElizabeth Orsman (1994). Later there was theDictionary of Modern New Zealand Slangpublished by Oxford in 1999.

Making Of The CentreAnother of Harry’s legacies is the New

Zealand Dictionary Centre. It is noexaggeration to say that the Centre would notexist today, as a joint venture between VictoriaUniversity of Wellington and OxfordUniversity Press, if it had not been for thefoundation that he laid by generously givingto the university the intellectual propertyrights to his lexicographical data, the productof almost fifty years study of the vocabulary ofNew Zealand English, and the basis fromwhich he compiled the DNZE. Since 1997 thismaterial has been incorporated into adigitised relational database, and it is beingconstantly updated, thus providing the basisfor future editions and new dictionaries.

Harry Orsman was one of a line ofVictoria alumni who carved out distinguishedcareers in what might have appeared at thetime to be the unpromising field oflexicography. Sidney Baker, RobertBurchfield, Grahame Johnston, Bill Ramson,and George Turner, some of whom had beenmentored by Professors Ian Gordon or PipArdern in Wellington, all had notablelexicographical careers. Robert Burchfieldwas appointed editor of what became thefour-volume Supplement to the OED(1972–86). He also edited the New ZealandPocket Oxford Dictionary (1986). GrahameJohnston edited the Australian Pocket OxfordDictionary (1976), and George Turner wasresponsible for the second edition (1984). BillRamson compiled the Australian NationalDictionary (1988). It was Harry Orsman,however, who through a lifetime of astutelistening and reading did most to capture thedistinctive New Zealand voice in the Englishlexicon.

The story is now well known of Harry, as aboy of 13 from the small town of Havelock inthe Marlborough Sounds, coming toWellington for his secondary education; of histime as a student at Victoria; of the severalyears he spent as a public servant in the ForestService with a promising career inadministration ahead of him, before hereturned to lecture at his old university. Overthe next four decades he became a much-loved teacher of Old and Middle Englishlanguage and literature to several generationsof students, all the while collecting materialon New Zealand English, which was to find itsway eventually into the great dictionary thatbecame a fitting memorial to his scholarly lifeand work.

The Generous ScholarA revealing insight into the scope andsignificance of his scholarship, and into thenature of the man, is to be found in the way

he shared the priceless information he hadcollected over the decades with otherlexicographers. The introduction to Volume Iof the Supplement to the OED (1972)acknowledges that ‘Mr H. W. Orsmanpresented to us his unique collection of some12,000 quotations from the New Zealandworks of the period from the rediscovery ofNew Zealand by James Cook until about1950’. This was twenty-five years before hecould publish the material himself in theDNZE. Similarly, when the Australian NationalDictionary was published in 1988, HarryOrsman’s contribution was acknowledged nofewer than three times in the introduction.He was also a consulting editor to otherworks, including the Macquarie and Penguindictionaries. His interest in the influence ofMaori on New Zealand English was repaidwhen he served as a technical consultant tothe Ngata English–Maori Dictionary project(1993). Harry Orsman’s legendary scholarlygenerosity was returned by academic friendswho trusted not only his judgement on theorigin and use of words but also the use towhich he put the data they shared with eachother. It is noteworthy that over the weeksbefore his death Harry was at work advising arecent PhD graduate on how to revise herlexicographical work for possible publication.

After a lifetime of scholarly hard graft, thehonours came to Harry Orsman inretirement, among them the LittD fromVictoria University, the Montana Medal forthe year’s outstanding work of non-fiction,and the appointment as a Companion of theNew Zealand Order of Merit. Finally, therewas the recognition from his lexicographicalpeers around the world. When news of hisdeath reached colleagues at Oxford, PennySilva, director of the OED project, eloquentlysummed up Harry’s achievement as alexicographer: ‘Harry’s contribution to NewZealand English was huge, but the effects ofhis work extended far beyond the nationalborders.’ Colleagues at the New ZealandDictionary Centre record our sorrow atHarry’s death and extend our sympathy toElizabeth and to all their family.

FROM THE CENTREGraeme Kennedy, DirectorNew Zealand Dictionary Centre

PAGE 6 NZWORDS AUGUST 2002

In July and August 2001 a total of 120 peoplewere interviewed in four Christchurch mallsand asked the question ‘Have you ever heardof the word “utu”?’ Their initial reaction,almost certainly, was to wonder why anyonewould spend their weekends asking peoplesuch a question, which is a fair enoughresponse. To understand why the particularword ‘utu’ might be of interest, it is necessaryto revisit some assumptions about lexicaltransfer from Te Reo Maori (TRM) to NewZealand English (NZE).

It has been suggested that lexical transfer,‘loaning’ or ‘borrowing’, has occurred fromTRM to NZE in two waves. The first waveoccurred in the early years of Europeansettlement (the colonial intake), and thesecond as a result of the Maori culturalrenaissance of the final quarter of thetwentieth century (a ‘koha Maori’, as it were).The colonial intake primarily involved wordstaken by the European settlers to describeMaori society, native flora and fauna, andplace names, for which there were often noEnglish equivalents (a receiver-orientedtransfer). The more recent intake, triggeredby the Maori Renaissance, involves words givento the language, as a means for NZE speakersto better understand Maori society and theNew Zealand cultural landscape (a donor-oriented transfer).

An important question arises from theassumption that there have been two waves oflexical transfer from TRM to NZE; namely,how is a word identified as part of the first orthe second wave? In the same way thatOrsman’s Dictionary of New Zealand English usesearly texts to identify the first written usage ofa word as part of NZE, it ought to be possibleto identify how more recent transfersoccurred and at what point they entered theNZE lexicon.

Certainly, during the flurry of reportingthat accompanied the sacking of DoverSamuels as Maori Affairs Minister in June2000, and the subsequent police investigationinto allegations of sexual misconduct, the utuangle provided great media fodder. All themajor metropolitan papers and TV newsprogrammes carried the story of Mr Samuels’supposed desire for utu. As far as exposuregoes, the word ‘utu’ could have had no betterpublicity, and it is fair to say that the word hadreached a level of mass use in NZE at thispoint.

There can be no doubt that ‘utu’ was partof the first wave of transfers, of interest to thecolonials due to its specific relation to warfarepractices, but Gordon and Deverson in NewZealand English and English in New Zealand(1998) acknowledge that words in the second

wave of lexical transfer include those that fellinto disuse after the first wave and wererevived. If ‘utu’ can be included in the secondwave, then it is under that subset of wordsgiven new life as a result of the MaoriRenaissance.

Visual media played a crucial role in the‘reawakening’ process of the MaoriRenaissance, with images of the Maori appealfor justice and New Zealand’s culturalstruggle, such as Dame Whina Cooper’shistoric 1975 land march and the 1981Springbok Tour, having a lasting effect onnational identity. During this era, film-makingin New Zealand experienced a significantupsurge, helped in large part by the efforts ofGeoff Murphy and Bruno Lawrence.

Geoff Murphy’s film Utu was released in1983 and had the distinction of being themost expensive film ever produced in NewZealand at the time, the second biggest boxoffice success (behind Goodbye Pork Pie), andthe first to be included in the mainprogramme at the Cannes Film Festival. As aconsequence, it received significant mediaattention—the ‘talkability’ factor thatadvertisers, marketers, and PR professionalscovet. In terms of an entry point into the NZElexicon as a part of the second wave, the filmUtu is a strong candidate as a vehicle forrevival of the word ‘utu’.

The word ‘utu’ is interesting, then,because it represents an opportunity forexploring the possible link between asignificant media event and lexicaldevelopment. Furthermore, ‘utu’ might be apart of both the give and take phases of lexicaltransfer from TRM to NZE, neatly fitting withthe reciprocity aspect of utu itself. With this inmind, the question ‘Have you ever heard ofthe word “utu”?’ was a good starting point forexploration of the hypotheses.

Measuring UtuAn eleven-point questionnaire was developedto investigate the following hypotheses: (1)that before the Maori Renaissance the term‘utu’ was not commonly used or understoodby native NZE speakers; (2) that the term isnow in mainstream use by native NZEspeakers as a synonym for ‘revenge’; and (3)that the film Utu was responsible for drawingnational attention to the word and facilitatingits journey into current mainstream use.Clearly the second is the easiest of the threeelements to test, and care had to be taken toavoid leading questions with regard to thethird.

If subjects answered ‘no’ to the firstquestion about awareness of the word ‘utu’,

then no further questions were asked, asidefrom the gathering of demographicinformation. The second question was arequest for the subjects’ personal definition ofthe word, and the full response was writtendown, in order to test the second hypothesis.The next five questions were designed to findout when and where the subjects last heard orsaw the word, in reference to what situation,whether they considered the word to be usedmore or less now than in the past, and howthey would use the word themselves.

Not until question 8 were the first andthird hypotheses approached. The eighthquestion was optimistically included andasked whether subjects could remember thefirst time they had ever heard the word. It wasexpected that a great number of responseswould be negative, simply becauseremembering the first occurrence of a word isnot something that people are often called onto do, but the results for this question, as willbe seen below, proved surprising.

The ninth question asked which settinghad the greatest influence on respondents’personal definition of the word (e.g. familyand friends, education, television, etc.), andthe tenth, a multiple choice question, askedwhether they had heard of the word ‘utu’before hearing of the film Utu. This questionwas left until near the end to allowinformation to come out with as littleprodding as possible earlier in thequestionnaire. The final question askedwhether the subjects could speak Maorifluently; this received no responses in theaffirmative.

While interviewing, a screening questionwas used to establish whether respondents hadbeen born in New Zealand or had lived heresince the age of five. Attempts were made tobalance the sample in terms of age andgender, but the final count was 65 females and55 males, and there were varying numbers ofpeople in each of the six decade-divided agecategories (from younger than 20 to olderthan 60), totalling 19, 25, 17, 20, 19, and 20respectively. Although the age categories werenot perfectly balanced, at least six of eachgender were included in each age range.

The ReturnBesides age and gender, other characteristicsof the sample included a weighting in favourof people raised in the South Island,constituting 80 per cent of the total. In termsof ethnicity, 81 per cent of respondents wereNZ European/Pakeha, 8 per cent identified asbeing at least part Maori, 3 per cent as PacificIsland, and the remainder consideredthemselves either Kiwis or New Zealanders.

UTU: A BIT OF GIVE AND TAKE?MARIA BARTLETT

PAGE 7 NZWORDS AUGUST 2002

More than a third of subjects (36 per cent)had an education level of fifth form or less, 23per cent had reached sixth or seventh form,21 per cent had undertaken some kind offurther training other than university, and 20per cent had a university degree or higher.

The first striking result of the survey was tothe first question. More than a third of thesample (35 per cent) had never heard of theword ‘utu’. It rang no bells and meantabsolutely nothing to them, which instantlymakes the second hypothesis a little shaky.Checking across the age range, all but one ofthe nineteen subjects younger than 20answered ‘no’ to this question, includingthree young Maori males. The best awarenessof the word was among the 30–60-year-olds,who had a higher level of awareness thanthose younger than 30 and older than 60.

When it came to giving a definition for theword, of the seventy-eighty people who saidthey had heard of the word, only a third couldcite a working definition. Many identified theword as being of Maori origin, but fivethought it was African. Twelve peopleautomatically mentioned the film, but as manyas nineteen admitted directly that they did notknow what its title meant. The most creativeresponse would have to be ‘somewhere nearTaihape’. Clearly, hypothesis 2 can claim toapply to only around a quarter of thesample—a far lower proportion than wasoriginally expected.

When subjects were asked how long it hadbeen since they had last heard or seen theword used, two-thirds (68 per cent) said that itwas more than a year ago. As far as identifyingwhere it was that they had heard or seen theword, 37 per cent cited the movie, eventhough this was not one of the multiple-choiceoptions. The next most popular choice wastelevision (13 per cent). When asked toexplain the situation the word was used todescribe, around 40 per cent could not give ananswer, but nineteen people said that it hadsomething to do with the film, ahead of thethirteen people who said it had something todo with Maori or something to do withrevenge. Already, support emerges forhypothesis 3.

In terms of frequency of use, exactly halfof the people who had heard of the word ‘utu’believed that the word is used less now than itwas in the past. Only 10 per cent agreed that itwas used more, and the rest thought that usewas about the same (26 per cent) or wereunsure (14 per cent). An overwhelmingnumber (85 per cent) said that they wouldnever be likely to use the word themselves,whereas 7 per cent said that they might use itwhen talking specifically about things Maorior with regard to current events. Seven peopleout of seventy-eight claimed that they woulduse the word in general conversation, andonly three of those understood the wordsufficiently to do so, given the definitions theysupplied in question 2. The three subjectswere all male, two of whom were New Zealand

European/Pakeha raised in close associationwith Maori and who had fond recollections ofthe word, describing it warmly as having ahumorous and friendly connotation.

In answer to question 8, which askeddirectly about the first time subjects had heardof the word ‘utu’, a great number said theycouldn’t remember (41 per cent), but anequally high number said that the film hadintroduced them to the word (36 per cent),which was a strong result for such a difficultquestion to answer. The next greatest numbermentioned education (15 per cent), withsome mentioning television (4 per cent),childhood (3 per cent), and the air forcespecifically (1 per cent). Again, hypothesis 3appears to have some credence.

In terms of influences, more than half ofthe seventy-eight people who knew of theword cited New Zealand film and television ashaving the greatest influence on theirunderstanding of the word, with fourteenpeople choosing education and the restchoosing a smattering of other sources,including six people who mentioned familyand friends. It comes as no surprise, then,given the preceding results, that 60 per cent ofsubjects who knew of the word claimed thatthey had never heard of the word until theyheard of the film, whereas 26 per cent hadeither at least heard of the word before theyheard of the film, or were somewhat familiarwith the word, or had known it sincechildhood. The rest knew of the word, but notof the film, which is interesting in itself.

Give And Take?As far as fitting the idea of a role in the takephase of lexical transfer, followed by arenewed role in the give phase, the evidencecould be considered supportive to somedegree. The over-60 age group did not seemto have as high a degree of awareness as the30–60 age group, which seems to indicate arise in awareness in the middle-aged groupthat would correspond with the time of theMaori Renaissance. A closer look at the over-60 age group showed that only a quarter ofthem were familiar with the word beforerelease of the film.

As has already been stated, only a quarterof the total number of subjects had a workingdefinition of the word. This low level of directknowledge could simply reflect the fact that‘utu’ is not a very common word and isapplicable only in specific circumstances. Theevidence linking the film with first knowledgeof the word is fairly strong, indicating that thefilm Utu created a ‘spike’ of awareness amonga particular generation of New Zealanders buthas not facilitated an increase in its general use.

The fact that some awareness of the wordexisted among the older population showsthat ‘utu’ had not completely lapsed from theNZE lexicon after the first wave. The filmboosted awareness of the word around thetime of the second wave, but the effects havecertainly waned, and in fact, with regard to

‘utu’, the tide of knowledge is almostcompletely out as far as the youngergeneration is concerned.

Seeking UtuThe survey results very clearly showed that theword ‘utu’ is not one that most NZE speakersare likely to use, even though around aquarter have the capacity to use it. Looking ata database of INL newspaper articles datingback to 1995, ninety instances of the word‘utu’ were found in the text (not including thesixty-nine instances that mentioned the filmor named a person or place). In other words,ninety articles out of the 1.4 million in thedatabase included an active textual use of theword ‘utu’, which gives a fairly graphicindication of just how rare the word is. Evenso, the majority of these articles (fifty-five) didnot feel the need to include a definitionalongside the word in text.

Most of the articles using the word ‘utu’were talking about either Maori politics, NewZealand history, or Maori society, but somecovered wider politics, sport, and generaltopics. ‘Utu’ in its abstract sense was variouslydescribed as a concept, notion, principle, law,or tradition, but the more interesting textualuses of the word related to the ‘act of utu’ orto a sense of vengeance. Many of the uses weredirect substitutions for the word ‘revenge’, asthe following examples indicate: ‘savouring aside dish of utu’; ‘Samuels seeks utu’; ‘gettingutu on the Taniwhas’; ‘as Winston takes hisutu’; ‘I want utu against my enemy’; ‘EastCoast exerted [presumably meaning‘exacted’] some utu’.

As far the act of utu was concerned,phrases related either to the initiator of utu orthe receiver of utu. The above examples relateto the initiator of utu, who may seek, desire,get or take utu. Phrases describing utufrequently had violent or fearful overtones,with articles talking about ‘the fury of utu’,‘the threat of utu’, ‘the stench of utu’, ‘thefear of utu’, and the ‘feeling of utu’—something like foreboding. Utu was related tokilling, maiming, and assault in the mostextreme cases but also included publichumiliation, political retaliation, and legalredress or compensation. As well as areference to traditional tribal utu, in amodern context it was possible for the articlesto talk of ‘union utu’ and even ‘office utu’,which constituted a sort of mischievousjustice.

The reciprocal and continual nature ofutu was captured in such phrases as ‘cyclicutu’, ‘endless cycles of utu’, and ‘thepernicious cycle of utu’. Utu was also referredto as a calculation, in terms of the ‘utuequation’. All of these examples demonstratethat although the word is infrequently used, itstill has some vitality as part of New ZealandEnglish and, in some cases, captures morethan the limited notion of revenge.

Maria Bartlett is doing postgraduate work inpolitical science at the University of Canterbury.

that reported friendsies also reported keepsies, but notvice versa.

The GamesThe number of recurrent names that were offeredturned out to be small, in some cases no doubt becausegames were described rather than named. Holes(holies, holesies), tic-tac-toe, and clicks (clickies) werethe most commonly named games. One minorvariation of interest is that an eye-drop (when you getvery close to an opponent marble, instead of firing at iton the ground, you pick up your marble and attempt todrop it on the opponent from eye-height) turned upelsewhere as an eagle-drop. We cannot say howwidespread either of these terms is.

Laurie and Winifred Bauer are linguists at VictoriaUniversity of Wellington.

PAGE 8 NZWORDS AUGUST 2002

ADDRESS FOR ARTICLES AND LETTERS

Tony DeversonEditor, NZWords

Department of EnglishUniversity of Canterbury

Private Bag 4800, ChristchurchFax: (03) 364 2065

Email: a.deverson@engl.canterbury.ac.nz

DEADLINE FOR NEXT ISSUE: 31 MARCH 2003

Payment: The publisher reserves the right to edit or not topublish letters and articles submitted. There is no payment forletters. Payment for articles accepted for publication is bycredit note from Oxford University Press for books from its listto the value of NZ$100.

MEDIA ENQUIRIESJoanna Black

Dictionary Marketing Co-ordinatorOxford University PressPHONE: +61-3-9934 9173Fax: +61-3-9934 9100

Email: blackj@oup.com.au

SUBSCRIPTIONS & BACK ISSUESNZWords is published annually and subscription is free.

To subscribe please send your name and postal details to:NZWords Subscription Manager

PO Box 5636, Wellesley Street, Auckland 1131,Toll free Fax: 0800 442 503 Email: NZWords@oup.com.au

Back issues: Back issues currently available in hardcopy(upon request): October 1999, August 2000, August 2001.

All back issues are available as pdf files athttp://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/nzdc

NZWORDS

NZWords is published by Oxford University Press

253 Normanby RoadSouth Melbourne VIC 3205Website: www.oup.com.au

Email: cs@oup.com.auFree–Phone: 1300 650 616Publisher: Heather Fawcett

in partnership withThe New Zealand Dictionary Centre

Victoria University of WellingtonPhone: (04) 472 1000

Fax: (04) 463 5604Email: nzdc@vuw.ac.nz

Website: http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/nzdcDirector of the New Zealand Dictionary Centre:

Graeme KennedyEditor: Tony Deverson

© Copyright 2002 Oxford University PressPhotocopying of this newsletter is permitted provided that allcopies include the name of the newsletter (which appears atthe foot of each page) as an acknowledgment of source. Allother forms of storage and reproduction are restricted underthe normal terms of copyright law.

ISSN 1440-9909

As part of an investigation into the playgroundlanguage of children funded by the Royal Society ofNew Zealand through the Marsden Fund, year 7 and 8children (forms 1 and 2, 11 or 12 years old) wereinterviewed in thirty-three schools right around NewZealand. One of the questions they were askedconcerned marbles. We were primarily concerned withtwo matters: the names of individual marble types, andthe words used for the difference between a game inwhich the winner keeps all the marbles they have wonand a game in which all the players walk away with theirown marbles. Although we also asked about gamesplayed with marbles, we were given very few details, andin general our survey cannot compete with that carriedout by Brian Sutton-Smith (The Folkgames of Children,Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972).

The interviewer carried a bag of assorted marbles,selected from those available from our children’scollection and a visit to some toy shops. Children(usually boys, but occasionally girls) were askedwhether they played marbles, and if they said that theydid or that they used to, they were asked about thenames for the marbles in the bag, and then asked forother names for marbles and the games they played.The methodology had its advantages and its drawbacks.The advantages lay in providing a fixed set of stimuli towhich the children could respond. The drawbacksturned out to be rather more important.

Because the marbles in the bag were virtually arandom selection, some common types were notcarried and some rare types were. Moreover, sometypes were carried in two slightly contrastingexemplars. Because the marbles in the bag wererandomly selected, they were not necessarilyprototypical examples of any particular type; this meantthat children argued about whether a particular marblewas or was not a member of category X, or would givetwo labels for the same marble if it had aspects of twoprototypes.

The result is an often confusing plethora of labelsfor the researcher to wade through. Matters have beensimplified here by not discussing names that were givenin only one school (these might have wider currency,but we have no way of knowing) and by attempting tosort out the features to which the children wereresponding in giving different names; this, of course,presupposes the interviewer’s proper understanding,which is probably a dangerous assumption to make.

The students who answered the question rangedfrom those who (like the interviewer) thought that theywere all just marbles (although some were bigger thanothers) to those who provided a quarter-hour lectureon the niceties of the various games, the histories of thevarious types of marble, and the sociology of marble-playing in the relevant school.

Words such as alley and taw/tor are mentioned bySutton-Smith as general names for marbles. Theseterms did not arise in our data. However, it would bepremature to presume that they are obsolete, since ourmethodology led to our asking about marbles and didnot give the opportunity for these other terms to comeup.

Marbles By SizeMarbles come in different sizes. The default marblesize is occasionally called a normal or a shooter, and asmaller size is called a peewee. The larger sizes have awide range of names, but the names do not always referto the same size of marble. Thus two large marbles ofdifferent sizes were both referred to as bonkers anddonks (the word donk was restricted to Northland inour data), and one large marble was referred to by asmany as fourteen different names. When differentnames for sizes were reported, it was not always possibleto gather what the hierarchy of sizes was or whether thesame hierarchy applied in all schools. As well as thenames already mentioned, the following were used forvarious kinds of large marble: bonk (rare), conker

(South Island only), emperor (North Island only),grandad (grandaddy, grandfather, grandpa), giant,godfather, jumbo, king, queenie, titanic.

Marbles By PatternThe difficulty in a publication that does not providecolour photographs is to describe each of the relevantpatterns in a way that can be understood. There wereseveral basic patterns, with a number of names each.

The default marble is clear glass with a twist ofcoloured material in the centre. This type is usuallycalled a cat’s eye, although this label was not used inNorthland where budget was sometimes given instead,and the term leafie was provided as an alternative onlyin the Nelson–Marlborough area. Another alternativeprovided sporadically was dummy.

The next most obvious pattern is one in which themarble has a single background colour, but has threeor four stripes (usually of different colours) runningfrom pole to pole. This was most frequently termed abeachball, and sometimes a candy.

A marble with a particularly shiny coloured surfaceis called a pearl if it is white, although pearl issubmodified by a colour term in other cases.

A ballbearing used as a marble is, for obviousreasons, called a steelie.

A marble whose surface provides the same opticalimpression of a rainbow that a pool of spilt oil providesis called an oily. This label was sometimes extended tomarbles whose surface pattern showed two or morecolours mixed through each other.

A marble on whose surface there are a number oflines intertwined in a random manner is called aspaghetti. Similarly patterned marbles were sometimescalled swirlies, although no single school reported thetwo names as synonyms.

A transparent marble made out of coloured glasshas a number of possible names. The ones in theinterviewer’s bag were made of brown glass and werecalled smokies or coca-colas (cokes, colas). These wereoccasionally also called clearies, a name that apparentlyapplies to marbles of other colours as well. This termwas also used occasionally for a marble with only a smallamount of superficial colour, otherwise known as abird’s cage.

There were two speckled marbles in theinterviewer’s sample bag, one showing colouredspeckles on a white background, the other showing thesame speckles on a black background. Usually thesewere both included under the term galaxy, althoughthe name speckled egg was sometimes applied to eithercolour. Sporadic, less polite names were used for thewhite one.

Black and white marbles were termed dalmatians,although there were occasional references to otherblack and white animals, including pandas.

Some children reported knowing about Chinesemarbles, which are flat on one side, although theinterviewer had none of these.

Finally, a marble that was opaque, as if made offrosted glass, was referred to as a frostie or achampagne.

A few other labels were recurrent, although theydid not refer to marbles in the interviewer’s bag ortheir reference was not clear: there were variousalternative kinds of eye, including pirate’s eye, as wellas genie, milk shake, red devil, and toothpaste (this lastpossibly an alternative name for a beachball).

To Keep Or Not To Keep?If you keep the marbles you win, childrenoverwhelmingly speak of playing for keeps or justkeepsies (sometimes both names were given from thesame school). Only in the south of the South Island wasthe term keepers an alternative. Some children had noterm for the other state of affairs, although friendliesand friendsies were the most common terms, withfunsies a long way behind numerically. All the schools

ANYONE FOR MARBLES?LAURIE BAUER AND WINIFRED BAUER