Drongo - an exclusively Aussie word?
By Judy Evans
@JudyEv (325755)
Rockingham, Australia
January 16, 2019 3:10am CST
Recently I wrote about the ‘spitting image’’ – a very strange phrase if ever there was one. Another unusual word is ‘drongo’. It seems there was a racehorse in the 1920s named Drongo that didn’t win a race in 27 starts and the word was picked up to describe a stupid or incompetent person. So I might call Vince a drongo if he's walking round looking for his hat and it's on his head. Or he might call me one when I go to the supermarket but forget to take any money - as I did just yesterday.
I knew this meaning of the word but wasn’t aware that it is also the name of a bird.
The spangled drongo (Dicrurus bracteatus) is found in eastern and northern Australia. There is another species found in Asia. It has black iridescent plumage with blue spangles on the breast and the tail is forked. They are mostly found along the north and east coasts of Australia and tend to migrate both east to west and north to south. They are great mimics and are easily tamed. I don't know why it came to be known as a 'drongo' but maybe the horse was named after the bird.
So have you heard of the word ‘drongo’ or is it another of our Australian slang terms?
Photo from Wikimedia: attribution not required but thanks to James Niland from Brisbane, Australia [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
38 people like this
38 responses
@allknowing (130066)
• India
16 Jan 19
We have this bird visiting us and I have posted a video here. It chirps in 8 different sounds including that of a cat
5 people like this
@JudyEv (325755)
• Rockingham, Australia
16 Jan 19
@allknowing It seems it is a great mimic.
3 people like this
@owlwings (43915)
• Cambridge, England
16 Jan 19
I knew that the drongo was a bird because it features in the song, "The Drover's Dream" which I have known for many years -"The drongo and the crow sang us songs of long ago" - and so had looked up long ago. I assumed that it was an Australian Aborigine word for the bird but Wikipedia says that it's a Malagasy word (indigenous language of Madagascar)
I also knew the word as a mild insult (perhaps from 'Neighbours' or from Paul Hogan's 'Crocodile Dundee') but I didn't know that it came from the name of a horse!
7 people like this
@louievill (28851)
• Philippines
16 Jan 19
Malagasy is an Austronesian language, it's a sub group together with Malayo-Polynesian where many Southeast Asian languages belong including Tagalog or Pilipino. Tagalog has the same word " drongo" for a similar looking black bird with a forked tail so most likely it was a retained word from the Western migration since drongos could also be found in Africa. Definitely it's not an aboriginal word and both of us did not know that the insulting word came from a race horse
4 people like this
@owlwings (43915)
• Cambridge, England
16 Jan 19
@louievill I knew that Malagasy is an Austronesian language. I have the greatest admiration for a people who could travel such vast distances in both the Indian and the Pacific Oceans. It must have taken a great leap of faith for those early sailors to set out in search of new lands, not knowing how long they would be at sea nor whether they would ever make landfall.
It's interesting that Tagalog also knows the bird as 'drongo'.
2 people like this
@JudyEv (325755)
• Rockingham, Australia
16 Jan 19
@owlwings @louievill I'd forgotten about it being in The Drover's Dream. It's still used as a mild insult. No-one would be very offended by being called a drongo. I keep wondering why they'd call a bird after a horse but of course the bird came first.
2 people like this
@arthurchappell (45002)
• Preston, England
16 Jan 19
heard the word used in Australian movies like Crocodile Dundee
6 people like this
@arthurchappell (45002)
• Preston, England
16 Jan 19
@JudyEv not seen The Drover's Dream
1 person likes this
@JudyEv (325755)
• Rockingham, Australia
17 Jan 19
@arthurchappell It's a song, not that it matters. I tried to find a YouTube of it and there are some but it seems some have the wrong lyrics and I haven't time to research which is correct at the moment.
1 person likes this
@JohnRoberts (109857)
• Los Angeles, California
16 Jan 19
As many Aussie slang and word abbreviations I have heard, drongo is new to me.
4 people like this
@JohnRoberts (109857)
• Los Angeles, California
16 Jan 19
@JudyEv I saw Crocodile Dundee way back when so don't recall the word being used.
1 person likes this
@allknowing (130066)
• India
16 Jan 19
We have the Greater racket tailed drongo visiting us often. It chirps in 8 different ways I have captured it in a video
It even chirps like a cat
Itis amazing to listen to the various sounds this bird makes at one sitting.
3 people like this
@allknowing (130066)
• India
16 Jan 19
@JudyEv Preiti would rush out thinking it was a cat but later realised.
1 person likes this
@louievill (28851)
• Philippines
16 Jan 19
Thanks for teaching me a new word 
. I searched, we have a drongo in the Philippines, black and looks similar, drongo-cuckoo is found only in the Philippines and belongs to a different genus, surniculus ( if I remember it right) most likely the horse was named after the bird.
. I searched, we have a drongo in the Philippines, black and looks similar, drongo-cuckoo is found only in the Philippines and belongs to a different genus, surniculus ( if I remember it right) most likely the horse was named after the bird.4 people like this
@jobelbojel (34729)
• Philippines
16 Jan 19
This is interesting. It is a new one for me.
3 people like this
@JudyEv (325755)
• Rockingham, Australia
16 Jan 19
There is a similar bird in Asian countries but it's a different species.
@FourWalls (62120)
• United States
16 Jan 19
Look at that pretty red eye!
Interesting origin of the slang term, too.
3 people like this
@FourWalls (62120)
• United States
17 Jan 19
@JudyEv -- and a horse is a horse, of course of course!
1 person likes this
@JudyEv (325755)
• Rockingham, Australia
17 Jan 19
@FourWalls Of course, of course. I used to love this show but only ever got to watch it if we were visiting our friends in the city.
1 person likes this
@JudyEv (325755)
• Rockingham, Australia
16 Jan 19
I've caught on here a couple of times putting up words that no-one knew. One was chook (chicken) but I've persisted with that one so maybe a few people now know what a chook is.
@JudyEv (325755)
• Rockingham, Australia
17 Jan 19
You are missing the point, as I did, that the bird came first and had been a drongo long before the horse came along. Maybe it was a black horse and was named after the bird. Then the poor old horse was a failure and drongo became a derogatory term and the now the bird is suffering because of it. I still can't quite get my head around it.
1 person likes this
@kobesbuddy (74554)
• East Tawas, Michigan
16 Jan 19
Oh it's a handsome bird, with beautiful coloring! Nope, I've never heard of a 'drongo' in the US, but of course, I'm not really up on bird names either.
2 people like this
@JudyEv (325755)
• Rockingham, Australia
18 Jan 19
@kobesbuddy that is so cute. And I had friends who had a cockatoo and every morning as they passed his cage on their way to work, he's say 'can I come, can I come'.
1 person likes this
@kobesbuddy (74554)
• East Tawas, Michigan
17 Jan 19
@JudyEv It sounds like the complete opposite, a very intelligent bird instead! My mom's friend Jeannie had a parakeet. It would say, 'Forgettin' something?' whenever she would pass by its cage in the morning. Jeannie would have to stop at the birdcage, allowing him to share a little kiss. Then, he would stop saying it!
1 person likes this
@dgobucks226 (34356)
•
17 Jan 19
Never heard of the term before. But as one who occasionally bets the ponies I'm surprised that horse did not fare better in his racing career. An American Thoroughbred racehorse called Mine That Bird is best known for pulling off a monumental upset, at 50-to-1 odds, by winning the Kentucky Derby in 2009.
For that horse "The Bird Is The Word."
2 people like this
@JudyEv (325755)
• Rockingham, Australia
18 Jan 19
@dgobucks226 I've heard a lot about Man o' War but I've never heard of Upset. Nice story.
1 person likes this
@dgobucks226 (34356)
•
17 Jan 19
@JudyEv Although most times favorites prevail sometimes there can be an unexpected upset. In the sports world It was at Saratoga, in 1919, that the word “upset” entered the American sports lexicon. That's when a horse named Upset beat the mighty Man o' War. It was Man o' War's only loss in the colts career.
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