Dictionary

blackgin en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Etymology

From black + Dharug dyin (“woman”) (David Nash, "Placenames evidence for NSW pidgin" in Felicity Meakins, Carmel O'Shannessy (eds) Loss and Renewal: Australian Languages Since Colonization, Walter de Gruyter, 2016, p.133.) https://books.google.ca/books?id=spjUCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&dq=%22blackgin%22&source=bl&ots=PAH4wZMnI1&sig=6pQWiSTFpQV6FcU9ZFhRzaTkbbQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwim-YfEg9vMAhUK-GMKHccqA_0Q6AEI5AEwLw#v=onepage&q=%22blackgin%22&f=false

Meanings

1. (Australia, derogatory) An Aboriginal woman.
   • Anna was of a lower caste than Nawnim. Her father was a Japanese. Therefore, according to the Law of the Land, which recognized no diluent for Aboriginal blood but that of a white race, she was a full-blooded blackgin and not entitled to franchise as Nawnim theoretically would be when he came of age. 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter V, in Capricornia, page 73:
   • […] a man has got to go on day after day, week after week, year after year, fighting devils of loneliness and worse—with nothing to look at except miles and miles of stark staring gum trees and black, smelling gidgee and dead-finish scrub—and never the glimpse of a woman—not counting black gins—to remind him he once had a mother and might have a wife. 1915, Rosa Praed, chapter 7, in Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land: A Story of Australian Life, London: Hutchinson:
2. The plant Kingia australis.

Forms