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Word
Where does Kangaroo (the word) come from?
Joseph Banks wrote down 'kanguru' in 1770 at today's Cooktown, where Cook's ship was being repaired, from the Guugu Yimithirr word gangurru. The tale that it means 'I don't know' is a myth.
More Words
Word
Cola (the word)
📍 Sierra Leone & Guinea, West Africa
Cola drinks are named after the kola nut, a caffeine-rich seed of West African forest trees. The word comes from West African languages such as Temne (kola) and Mandinka (kolo), and kola nuts went into Coca-Cola in 1886.
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Word
Taboo (the word)
📍 Tonga
Captain Cook picked up 'taboo' in Tonga in 1777, when Tongan nobles he'd invited to dinner wouldn't eat because they were taboo: forbidden. Similar words exist across Polynesia, like Hawaiian kapu.
Word
Tomato (the word)
📍 Central Mexico
Spanish tomate comes from tomatl in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Italy only received its first tomatoes around 1548 and called them pomi d'oro, 'golden apples'.
More from Oceania
Nature
Sugarcane
📍 New Guinea
Sugarcane was first domesticated in New Guinea. Austronesian voyagers spread it across the Pacific and west to India, where Alexander's admiral Nearchus marvelled at “reeds that produce honey without bees”.
Invention
Didgeridoo
📍 Arnhem Land, Australia
Aboriginal peoples of northern Australia, probably in Arnhem Land, developed it centuries before Europeans arrived. The name 'didgeridoo' isn't Aboriginal; it's an imitative English word first printed in 1908.
Invention
Ukulele
📍 Honolulu, Hawaii
Madeiran craftsmen who sailed to Hawaii in 1879 turned their little machete guitar into the ukulele in the 1880s, and King Kalākaua made it a royal favourite. The Hawaiian name roughly means 'jumping flea'.