Furphies Odorous and Otherwise - and Cultural Intimations

Abstract

The word 'furphy', a part of the title of this magazine, has been pondered upon for semantic nuance in various earlier issues - formally in No. 1 (p. 1), and less seriously in No. 5 (pp. 1-2). It is generally held to have entered the Australian and English languages in or about 1916. That date is given by both the first volume (1972, p. 1180) of the 'Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary' and by G.A. Wilkes in his 'Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms' (1978, p. 150), in each of which places reference is made to a note on the word in 'The Anzac Book' (1916), p. 56: "Furphy was the name of the contractor which was written large upon the rubbish carts that he supplied to the Melbourne camps. The name was transferred to a certain class of news item, very common since the war, which flourished greatly upon all the beaches." Each modern authority allows for the word to have a less pleasant nuance, the first by its reference to 'water and sanitary carts' (loc. cit.), the second by the secondary sense of 'a latrine rumour'. Both dictionaries stress the association with World War I, and this is supported by the many cited quotations.