Peter wrote an interesting email that raises some prickly questions.
Here is his message:
“Here’s a curiosity that you might find interesting. Yesterday I was playing Scrabble with my wife and wanted to use the word ‘abo.’ I doubted the official Scrabble dictionary would allow it but I checked anyway. And blow me down, it was allowed. So I thought I’d check the word ‘coon.’ It is allowed for two contexts, the first as a contraction of raccoon. The second is as an eccentric or undignified rustic. The example of its usage is ‘I’ll be a gone coon when the battle starts.’ That example doesn’t seem to gel with me. ‘Gone coon’ sounds more like ‘gone native’ which would indicate a rustic. However, what intrigued me about this was that it was an expression my father frequently used as in ‘that joker’s a gone coon’ meaning he is headed for failure. My uncle, Dad’s brother-in-law, also used to use it in that context. They were from South Australia. Are you aware of the extent it might have been used across Australia?”
There is a whole lot there that Peter raises, so let’s look at each of these issues in turn.
To begin with, the Oxford has a helpful usage note on the word ‘abo.’
They say: “Early evidence suggests the term was used as an abbreviation of Aboriginal or Aborigine without specific hostile intent. Nevertheless, such usage is in contexts of widespread discrimination and prejudice towards Australian Aboriginal people and usually carries implications of assumed cultural superiority or racial condescension.”
In other words, when ‘abo’ was coined (around 1900) it was used as an abbreviation of ‘Aboriginal’ with no hostile intent, but that over years it has become associated with racial hostility and is now an offensive word used and a term of abuse and as such should not be used.
As for ‘coon’ being acceptable in certain contexts, the problem is that on a Scrabble board there is no context—it’s an isolated word.
I think there needs to be a blanket ban on both words.
Finally, Peter’s report on the Australian use of ‘coon’ (meaning ‘failure’).
The only explanation I can see is that it was an extension of the use of ‘coon’ as an offensive word for an Aborigine.
As such it is the sort of thing that we should best avoid these days.
Tonight I will join John Stanley on 2GB, 4BC, 2CC and Nine Radio Network for 'The Word Clinic' -- right after the 10pm news (9pm in Queensland). Join us to ask a question or make a comment about words and language.
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