blackfellow

Also black·fel·la

[blak-fel-oh]

noun

Older Use: Usually Offensive.

1. a term used to refer to an Aboriginal inhabitant of Australia.

Word History and Origins

Origin of blackfellow¹

First recorded in 1730–40; black + fellow

Example Sentences

As a further protection against lurking blackfellow or prowling dingo, a man slept in a small wooden portable cabin, called a watch-box, close by the sheep.

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When they were mustering these cattle before starting, the boss, Mr. A. Scott Holmes, riding along with a stockman, met a blackfellow whose gin had two half-caste children with her, aged about nine and seven years; the blackfellow evidently wanted them to see the children, as he kept pointing to them.

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The blackfellow generally wears his hair long, and usually caked into thick matted rope-like coils, with a band of red above the forehead, or else a native dog’s tail.

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There is a superstition about abstracting the kidney fat of a blackfellow for promoting luck in fishing, and this is said to be done in various ways.

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In some places they skin the dead blackfellow, and twist the skin round a bundle of spears with the hair sticking up on top, and they carry this to different camps, sticking it in the ground by the points of the spears; children are sometimes eaten when they die.

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