ANECDOTE | HORSES | EDUCATION
What The Heck is a Drongo And Why Was it my Mother’s Favorite Insult?
How a racehorse became immortalized in Australian slang
Drongo is a typical Australian insult. While gardening, a job I loathed, my mother would frequently point out the weeds left behind. “Hey, drongo,” she would call out, “You missed another one.”
In fact, my horse-mad mother called me drongo so often when I was younger that you could be forgiven for thinking it was my name. It wasn’t such a far stretch. The front runner during my mother’s pregnancy was Pertain, after a horse she was fond of.
But I digress…back to drongo. The polite interpretation of a drongo is a “no-hoper,” a “loser,” or a bit of a “duffer.” The not-so-polite version isn’t fit for today’s society. Dropping the drongo bomb is usually accompanied by rolling eyes or a shake of the head. If you’ve been a pretty big drongo, both the rolling eyes and shaking head will make an appearance simultaneously. As for me, well, I frequently found myself on the receiving end of the eye-rolling and head-shaking combination.
Growing up, I assumed that poor Drongo had trouble keeping up with the pack. An image of a horse running, not only in last place but straggling well behind the pack…
