THE ORIGIN OF “COBBER”

Taranaki Daily News, 23 July 1929, Page 16

THE ORIGIN OF “COBBER”

JUDGES SEEK IXTEKPKETAI'IOS.

Sydney, June 27.

Sydney Is often amused by the insistent demand by some members of the local Judiciary for the expression In the courts of English in its purest and undefiled form.

To insist upon good English is right, but the general feeling is that some of the judges go just a little too far in the matter. The latest dictum from the bench, that “cobber” is a “slum,” w’ord, is an example of the extremes to which judges sometimes go. The word “cobber” is just as good Australian, and therefore English, as the w T ord “boomerang,” for example. It has an even deeper, sentimental meaning than the word “friend.” “Cobber” is an accepted Australian word, whether the judges like it or not. Rabbi Cohen, the leader of the Jew'ish community in Sydney, is authority for the statement that the word—and it is not at all distasteful to him—is simply a corruption of “Chaber” in Hebrew;, meaning companion or mate. The Rabbi, by the way, who sees unmistakably the development of an Australian-Hebrew pronunciation, recalls the days when he was in the Ministry in Dublin, and the children of the Jewish community there spoke Hebrew' with a distinct brogue. The word “oobber,” by the way., is not the only good homely Australian w’ord that has its genesis in Hebrew'. Everyone knows the meaning of it, not a few from painful experience. It is derived from the Hebrew “Shikur, which means the same thing, that is, intoxicated. To say that “cobbei is a “slum” word seems ridiculous.