Has anybody read of a theory like this? According to World Wide Words , the theory about the pomegranate seem to be the more credible one, its real origin remains unclear for this outdated term:. Growing up in Australia Sydney in the s, I remember being told by several older people whom I can't remember that the word came from the French word "pomme" for apple. The reason given was similar to one of the explanations for "pomegranate" as the source: English migrants tended to sunburn upon arrival in Australia.
Another reason I heard was that when in England the cheeks of the English looked red like a red apple because it was so bloody miserable and cold there. Despite the lack of corroborating made-up evidence on the internet, "pomme" seems a more plausible origin than "pomegranate", rhyming slang notwithstanding. I never heard of a pomegranate in Australia in the s and s, and it's still mostly an imported fruit. It would have been relatively unknown in Australia in the early s. The term seems to have originated around then.
There was a lot of migration from England to Australia after the war so there would have been a lot of overlap of soldiers returned from France and England with English migrants. This etymology may have passed from my grandfather to my father to me.
Early Australian newspaper instances of Pommies suggest that the expression originated in Perth, Western Australia. At any rate, the earliest mentions—totaling several dozen—of the term that appear in a search of the Trove National Library of Australia database of historical Australian newspapers are from that city. Here are twenty of them. Also we were advised to this effect: "Beware of the Pomegranate Johns immigrant policemen. If they catch you asleep it's odds on them putting the boot in.
The local chaps are all right. They do give a man a chance. Although this is a public recreation ground, some of the Johns won't let the hard-up people use it, especially at night. There's one bloke comes down here who's a fair nark. We don't understand his language too well, him being a ' pommy ,' but he lets us know what he means all right.
Shifts us on every time he spots us, and if we didn't get away quick and lively he'd be sure to vag us, or let us know what English leather is like. This is a free country, I don't think. Well, I don't know. Perhaps something turns up.
You've got me beat there. We don't feel it while we're asleep down here. That's the best part of it, only for the ' pommy Johns. Sir,-As "Another Britisher" does not seem to understand why the average Australian is so hostile towards the immigrant, or "jimmigrant," or " pommy ," whichever name pleases them best, I should like to give him just one instance as to the cause.
I was an immigrant two years ago, and must say that I am ashamed to own that section of Britishers as my fellow-countrymen. Sir,—Might I, through the columns of your paper, ask a favour from a few of the men about town? Will they please refrain from using insulting remarks to the girls and women who come from the old country, where they are always respected; while here we are afraid and too disgusted to walk out alone.
It would be a real blessing to us if some friend would kindly take this matter up. We only come into this country to work for the good of the country, ourselves, and those that employ us.
And when we take a walk after our daily work is over we don't like to hear these remarks: "Look at the dirty Pommies ," which we are not; we are clean-living and clean-minded human beings, and we ask to be treated as such. Immigrants are known in Perth as " pommies.
It is getting late, and the trams are rushed. Impossible bundles are forced on the platforms. The " pommy " conductors are protesting in patois resembling the Tower of Babel. The late-supper crowd stream into the haunts of stout and oysters. The hotel bars swarm with noisy good nature. The views of old-established wheatfields, with thousands of pounds' worth of horseflesh and harvesters careering up and down, ivy-clad homesteads, and Government experimental farms should go far towards kidding the potential pommy to rush wildly for his steerage ticket in the hope of grabbing a slice of this wilderness while the wild corn is yet ripe, and before the wild beasts of the jungle have had time to eat it bare.
Tree-falling, per bio. There are various other discrepancies, but we don't want to be a nark. The moonlight effect in Spencer's "Immigrant" film, showing the pommy tramp coming into the Fremantle Harbor, is easily the best piece of local work done to date. Two thousand square feet of fresh tan was pulped to powder under the mighty pressure of pommie.
That at latest the old man is trying to swear in the pommy gardener as a special constable. That a newly-arrived pommy made a monkey of a bunch of tormentors and slingers-off. Out of the common is this picture, inasmuch as not one of the hundreds of miners employed appears to be aware that the bio. The great Australian slanguage is becoming remarkably rich in synonyms.
Immigrants are variously known as "jackeroos," '"pomegranates" and " pommies. Canting parsons are "tub-thumpers," "Holy Joes," "devil-dodgers" and "wowsers. From a classified advertisement in the [Perth] West Australian March 1, :. Love Bros. From a letter by "A. These recent arrivals do not come here as poverty-stricken outcasts. They have left an older civilisation where, doubtless, opportunities are fewer, and the battle of life more strenuously waged. They have come in hopes of finding a wider field and they only ask a fair field and no favour.
I say that it is the bounden duty of those who are responsible for their presence here to see that they have this fair field, and for these same authorities to come down with a quick and a heavy hand on any mean-spirited individuals who would dare to offer the strangers these dastardly insults. The other day I noted a tradesman's advertisement for lab our which concluded with the truly manly phrase, "No pommies! I like someone more broad-minded and manly.
When the tribe of pommies , jimmy-grants, and unregistered lime-juice lickers hears a native of the soil—who is a groper—refer to them in any of the following terms, a "boshter," "bontodger," "bonza," "boshterino" or "bosker" bloke, he need not go sour and agitate his Lancashire clogs with the intention of kicking the spruiker of this chat in the "darby kell" because all these expressions represent the dead limit of admiration.
That a tram ride in Perth was recently enlivened by a battle royal between Gripers and Pommies. How far this sense of oneness goes is seldom realised. A striking indication was given the other day in a big departmental store in the city, when a Chinese lady on the trail of one of the errors that afflict housewives, blamed a " pommy " for the fault, and insisted that more care should be taken in admitting newcomers to "our country" in competition with "our own people. We hear a poor immigrant utter a few words in his provincial dialect, and "Johnnie" or " pommie " is flung at the poor, bewildered newcomer!
Well, perhaps in the end it will serve a good turn, for if in the course of time Johnnie or " pommie " rises to Parliamentary and Cabinet rank he will, remembering the jeer, make it easier for the newcomer his Government is inviting and welcoming. We notice that the authorities are crying out about shortage of registrations.
First, we need to understand a bit of the argot of the docks in Melbourne. Those with a penchant for rhyming slang called immigrants Jimmy Grants. Given their propensity to go red in the sun, perhaps some wag thought that a reference to the fruit would result in a more barbed insult.
The pomegranate theory was also good enough for D H Lawrence who repeated the story in his Australian-based novel of , The Kangaroo, writing:. Perhaps it is right and at least it takes us away from the more dubious convict-era derivations. It was almost certainly a post-convict term but was also likely to have formed part of the every day speech of Australians well before the first examples appeared in print, perhaps dating to the nineteenth century. These days, of course, Pom is used generally to describe a Brit, not just one who has newly arrived in Australia.
I just hope that come the middle of September the Poms have their hands on the little urn once more. Can you calibrate the intensity of different insect stings? Martin Fone, author of 'Fifty Curious Questions', investigates. If there's a definite answer, it's time we knew. The strange layout of keyboards in the Anglophone world is as bafflingly illogical. Martin Fone, author of 'Fifty Curious Questions',. Sign up for free and get access to exclusive content:. Free word lists and quizzes from Cambridge.
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