Definition of "larrikin"
larrikin
noun
plural larrikins
(Australia, New Zealand, slang, historical) A young, brash, and impertinent, and possibly violent, troublemaker, especially one who is a gang member; a hooligan.
Quotations
I wish to call your attention to the annoyance foot passengers are subject to by the ill-behaviour and disgraceful conduct exhibited by the larrikins, and also from men (who ought to know better), who infest the market reserve for the purpose of disposing of their wood, and who, until they do so, are the cause of the annoyance above referred to, which I suppose they would term amusing themselves. The rows and fights which they betimes indulge in, accompanied by some of the foulest and most blasphemous language, frequently to passers-by, and also the obstruction of the footpath, ought to attract the attention of those at whose hands the remedy lies.
1870 November 22, Pro Bono Publico [pseudonym], “The larrikin nuisance. To the editor of the Advertiser.”, in The Geelong Advertiser, number 7505, Geelong, Vic.: […] [F]or the proprietors by Alfred Douglass, […], page 3, column 7
The reputation of the Melbourne larrikin was world wide, the larrikin being the forerunner of the hooligan. Law and education had failed to reform these larrikins, and at last some of the citizens hit on the method of forming cadet corps, which had proved to be a conspicuous success, and larrikinism was now dead; the streets of Melbourne knew it no more as a real source of terror.
1907 June 17, Guy Baring, “Territorial and Reserve Forces Bill”, in The Parliamentary Debates (Authorised Edition), Fourth Series, Second Session of the Twenty-eighth Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland […], volume CLXXVI, London: Wyman and Sons, […] [for] His Majesty’s Stationery Office, column 247
Flagstaff Hill [in Dunedin] is a hill without a flagstaff. […] Another man told me there never had been a staff on the hill; but if there had been, perhaps larrikins would have removed it. For larrikinism is one of the evils of New Zealand. Everywhere there one hears of the larrikin, or young hoodlum. Larrikins are an unorganized, mischievous fraternity. They are always despoiling or marring public or private property or making people the butt of coarse jokes and jeers. If something is stolen, "the larrikins took it"; if windows or park seats are broken, "the larrikins did it."
1913 October, [David] Paul Gooding, “Dunedin—Miscellaneous Ben Rudd and Flagstaff Hill—Roomy Invercargill—State Oysters—Romantic Stewart Island”, in Picturesque New Zealand, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin Company […], pages 170–171
Then the Wet Season came with its extremes of heat and humidity and depraving influences on the minds of corruptible men. Even Oscar began to drink to excess. But he never bawled and pranced and wallowed in mud and came home in the arms of shouting larrikins.
1938, Xavier Herbert, “Psychological Effect of a Solar Topee”, in Capricornia […], New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton-Century Company, published 1943, page 18
He [Robert Percy Whitworth] was one of the earliest writers to turn the city larrikin to literary account in a variation of the picaresque conte, […]
1953, Colin Roderick, “Biographical Notes”, in edited by Colin Roderick, Australian Round-up: Stories from 1790 to 1950, Sydney, N.S.W.; London: Angus and Robertson, page 345
(by extension, Australia, slang) A high-spirited person who playfully rebels against authority and conventional norms; a maverick.
Quotations
When [Frank] Browne's turn came, he went down like a true larrikin, giving cheek to the end. He spoke eloquently and at length about freedom of speech.
1988 August, Gavin Souter, “Lord Protector”, in Acts of Parliament: A Narrative History of the Senate and House of Representatives, Commonwealth of Australia, Carlton, Vic.: Brown Prior Anderson for Melbourne University Press, part 3 (Canberra 1850–1988), page 432
From the moment he had become opposition leader following the defeat of Lindsay Thompson's government in 1982, Jeff Kennett had been viewed as a political larrikin. […] To his defenders, Kennett was simply a brash and youthful leader seeking to energise the defeated Liberal Party and remove the "dead wood" from its ranks. Yet, to his many detractors, Jeff Kennett was shallow and reckless with a propensity for silly and embarrassing gaffes.
2006, Nick Economou, “Jeff Kennett: The Larrikin Metropolitan”, in Paul Strangio, Brian Costar, editors, The Victorian Premiers, 1856-2006, Leichhardt, N.S.W.: The Federation Press, page 363
adjective
comparative more larrikin, superlative most larrikin
(Australia, slang) Exhibiting the behaviour or characteristics of a larrikin (noun sense).
(historical) Of or relating to, or behaving like, a hooligan; hooliganistic, thuggish.
Quotations
Hoping my letter will have the desired effect of removing the larrikin nuisance especially in such a central portion of the town, […]
1870 November 22, Pro Bono Publico [pseudonym], “The larrikin nuisance. To the editor of the Advertiser.”, in The Geelong Advertiser, number 7505, Geelong, Vic.: […] [F]or the proprietors by Alfred Douglass, […], page 3, column 7
[…] [Edward] Dyson turned to the city, and in Fact'ry 'Ands (1906) concentrated upon the larrikin class which had developed in Melbourne since [Robert Percy] Whitworth first noted it.
1953, Colin Roderick, “Biographical Notes”, in edited by Colin Roderick, Australian Round-up: Stories from 1790 to 1950, Sydney, N.S.W.; London: Angus and Robertson, page 352
‘Larrikin gangs’ were a conspicuous feature of Sydney; and as a result of the selection acts, it was said, in the country perjury became a common-place in the lives of all.
, A[lan] G[eorge] L[ewers] Shaw, “The Calm before the Storm”, in The Story of Australia, 2nd edition, London: Faber and Faber, page 148
Despite his skills as a singer and storyteller, Percy [Bird] sometimes felt like an outsider among the diggers, excluded by his own ideal and practice of moral manhood from the more larrikin masculinity that he perceived to be predominant.
1995, Alistair Thomson, “A Crisis of Masculinity? Australian Military Manhood in the Great War”, in Joy Damousi, Marilyn Lake, editors, Gender and War: Australians at War in the Twentieth Century (Studies in Australian History), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, part 2 (Masculinities), page 138
(by extension) Playfully rebellious against and contemptuous of authority and convention; maverick.
Quotations
Mungo [Wentworth] MacCallum is hardly typecast as the chronicler of the story of what has gone right and wrong about the business of immigration, regular and irregular, to this country but this most larrikin and cold-eyed of one-time Canberra chroniclers brings to this story all his wit and dryness and power of mind.
2002, Peter Craven, “Introduction”, in Peter Craven, editor, Quarterly Essay, volume 5, Melbourne, Vic.: Black Inc., Schwartz Publishing, page iii
Another area was occupied by a group of guests with a clearly more larrikin style, and who very much belonged to the dominated fraction. […] The language used was rather different (more 'crude' in the second one), clothing style was different too (less trendy, and much cheaper clothes in the second group), as was appearance in general (heavier tattoos in the second group, more people with bad teeth, more of the men with the working-class goatee) and the interaction was generally more boisterous.
2006, Allon J. Uhlmann, “Family and Gender, and Society at Large”, in Family, Gender and Kinship in Australia: The Social and Cultural Logic of Practice and Subjectivity (Anthropology and Cultural History in Asia and the Indo-Pacific), Aldershot, Hampshire; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing, page 151
"We're all a bit embarrassed by him [Steve Irwin]. He puts that image of Australia to the world – that larrikin attitude – and we're not all like that," says Milo Laing, 27, the manager of an Australian-themed bar on Shaftesbury Avenue. "But at the end of the day he did a lot of work for charities and he employed 550 people in his zoo. He grabbed life by the horns."
2006 September 5, Patrick Barkham, “‘It’s like a part of Australia has died’”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, archived from the original on 2024-07-06