On Mon, 16 Dec 2002, Glen Byrns wrote:
> Mike,
>
> I thought "POM" was short for 'pommies', which was a term for the first
> white settlers of Australia which of course were deported English
> prisoners,(Prisoner Of Mother England). Is there some other derivation or
> has the term drifted in meaning from its first usage?
Yes, that is the derivation, but its meaning has evolved to mean anyone
of recent English heritage (i.e. if you speak with an english accent,
you are a pom!) Another useful indicators are skin complexion that
alternates between pasty white and sunburnt red :-) (If you can't tell,
we Aussies enjoy "taking the piss out of"(*) the English)
BTW, despite rumours to the contrary, prisoners were only a small
portion of the population during the convict period. There were a large
number of free settlers as well as the required infrastructure (staff,
merchants etc) to support the colony.
Later, in the mid 1800s, the gold rush saw a dramatic rise in the
population, but the convict period was well and truly over before
then.
Warning: assoid(**) alert: I think convict shipments stopped in the
first decade of the 1800s, but this is subject to the deteriation of my
organic information processing and retrieval facility.
(*) taking the piss out of: to ridicule with good humour.
(**) assoid is a factoid(***) "pulled out of one's arse", i.e. a factoid
that has a low degree of confidence wrt accuracy.
(***) factoid: inconsequential piece of information
Mike
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