morepork

There's a wind on the eastern side.
Ghost Gums dance in the moonlit night.
Mopoke mourns the racketeers.

- Midnight Oil, Outside World

I eagerly await your list of Australian terms for idiots. :-D

Oh, and birds, too.

This is the way it seems to me:
morepork (NZ) = ruru (NZ) = boobook (Australia) = mopoke (Europe) = the bird Ninox novaeseelandiae and its cousin in Europe.

I have never heard morepork used in Australia for birds or idiots. We have plenty of other colourful terms for idiots :-)

Do you always begin conversations this way?
Surrender!

You're sick, I'll humor you.
uselessness, you don't happen to have six fingers on your right hand, do you?

Yep. Definitely gonna watch that movie again. Whatever it's called. ;-)

You mean you're still trying to win? I think that's the worst thing I've ever heard.

phew.

Dude. Read my comments.

ahem. uselessness . . . you . . . you ARE a nerd, right?

Oh, never heard of it. Is it good?

Only the best movie ever, "The Princess Bride".

What movie? Did I miss something?

Damn, I have to watch that movie again!

As you wish.

Never get involved in a land war in Asia, uselessness. And never go in against a wordie when definitions are on the line. A-HAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHA! HA HA H--

What does it mean? I'll go look it up, and see which of you is right... and which of you is dead.

Seanahan... You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
;)

Oroboros, you're right. That lyrebird is one crazy avian. I can't stop watching that clip from the Attenborough series--even bought the DVD set in part because of it. A chainsaw, for crying out loud!

inconceivable!

I smell nothing.

Smell that? Iocaine powder!

According to the OED, Australia is entirely peopled with criminals!

Pamelad, I thought the same thing. Stupid OED, what do they know about Australians anyway... Maybe it's historical or something--or else the OED people were frequently called moreporks and then told that it was a common term in Australia, jokingly, and didn't get it. ;)

Here's a bird that probably could call 'morepork', judging by the repertoire of crazy warbles I've heard. Check out lyrebird.

Thanks, pamelad. It's still fun to say, if you ask me. :-)

Never, ever heard anyone in Australia call anyone a morepork, so as far as this being a term of abuse someone's kidding someone. Here's a poem that mentions mopokes.

http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/authors/denniscj/bookforkids/hist.html

Now, would I kid you?

I'd dearly love to hear this bird some day; wouldn't you? Meantime, we can call each other morepork ad nauseum. Not to mention goatsucker.

You are kidding me.

No... wait... the OED sez:
Originally and chiefly: the boobook owl, Ninox novaeseelandiae. Also (Austral.) any of several other nocturnal birds, esp. the tawny frogmouth, Podargus strigoides.

And, let's not forget:
colloq. Austral. A stupid or tiresome person (freq. as a term of abuse).

You, you morepork, you! You darned morepork frogmouth!

An Australian crested nightjar, so named because of its cry.