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From: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Inkhorns are a fascinating linguistic phenomenon, ...
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2024 09:20:18 +1200
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On 17/09/2024 11:08 p.m., Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 17/09/24 16:44, Silvano wrote:
>> Peter Moylan hat am 17.09.2024 um 01:32 geschrieben:
> 
>>> That reminds me of an incident in an earlier job of hers, when she
>>>  worked in a psychiatric hospital. A small town north of Newcastle
>>> had had no doctor for a long time, but Australia has a policy of
>>> getting immigrant doctors out to rural areas, so they finally got
>>> someone. That doctor sent one of his patients down to the psych
>>> hospital for assessment. The clinical notes said that he was
>>> obsessed with attacking birds.
>>>
>>> When interviewed, one of the first things he said was "Stone the
>>> crows, I don't know why they sent me here."
>>
>> I assume that "stone the crows" is a common idiom in that part of
>> Australia. 1) What does it mean? 2) Do native speakers of other
>> varieties of English know and use that idiom?
> 
> Good questions. It's an Australian expression, and more specifically
> from the language of rural areas rather than the cities. I believe it's
> understood in England, although the English clearly view it as an
> Australianism. I have no idea whether it is also known in the rest of
> GB&Ireland. It is probably not understood in North America, except among
> those exposed to a lot of Australian literature.
> 
> Meaning: it's a general expression of surprise or incredulity. An
> approximate equivalent is "Bloody Hell".
> 
> Etymology: nobody is sure. It could derive from times when farmers hired
> people to throw stones at crows who were damaging the crops, but
> personally I can't see how that would evolve into an expression of
> surprise. I suspect that it's just a phrase that someone made up, and
> adopted by others who found it colourful.

OED labels the expression "esp. Australian". They find it in three 
Australian books from the 1930s, then a couple post-war which don't have 
any obvious Aus connection. One is "The Otterbury Incident" by Cecil Day 
Lewis (1948), a book for children which sounds interesting.

These things do get around. Some British readers would surely have been 
exposed to it through the "Barry McKenzie" comic strip which ran in 
_Private Eye_ during the 1960s, though it might have been lost in the 
profusion of Australianisms (real and fanciful) which adorned that strip.

I had a distant memory of "Stone the crows!" being used by a couple of 
stray Australian characters who wandered through another comic strip, 
"Pogo", at some point. Wikipedia helps:

"There are occasional forays into exotic locations as well, including at 
least two visits to Australia (during the Melbourne Olympics in 1956, 
and again in 1961). The Aussie natives include a bandicoot, a lady 
wallaby, and a mustachioed, aviator kangaroo named "Basher"."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_(comic_strip)