"Larrikin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... members are akin to the street-arabs of London and elsewhere, but differ from them in many respects. The Auckland "larrikin" is a growing nuisance, but he is neither so numerous nor so objectionable as yet as his fellow in Melbourne and Sydney. Unlike the street-arab, he is either a school-boy, or earns his living somehow, or he is a truant from work of either ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... hoodlum and the Australian larrikin, which are both older than our hooligan (see p. 12). The origin of hoodlum is quite obscure. The story believed in Australia with regard to larrikin is that an Irish policeman, giving evidence of the arrest of a rough, explained that the accused was a-larrikin' (larking) in the street, and this was misunderstood by a reporter. But there appears to be not the slightest foundation for this story. The word is perhaps a diminutive of the common Irish name Larry, also immortalised in the ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley |
