[A purely L. word, applied to those who were believed to have been the inhabitants of a country ab origine, i.e., from the beginning (see ORIGIN). At first only in the pl.; for the sing. ABORIGINAL has been used, also ABORIGEN, ABORIGIN; and aborigine, which, seeming to be more in accordance with ordinary Eng. analogies, is the usual form, though etymologically as indefensible as serië or indicè as a sing. of series, indices.]
1. The original inhabitants of a country; originally, the race of the first possessors of Italy and of Greece, afterwards extended to races supposed to be the first or original occupants of other countries.
1547. J. Harrison, Exhort. to Scottes (1873), 214. The old latins … callyng themselfes Aborigines, that is to saie: a people from the beginnyng.
1610. Holland, Camden’s Brit., I. 9. Diodorus and others … would have the Britans to be … meere Aborigines; that is, Homelings and not forren brought in.
1735–8. Ld. Bolingbroke, Dissn. upon Parties, 141. The antient Britons are to us the Aborigines of our Island.
1841. Spalding, Italy, I. 44. The Umbrians are said to have been the aborigines of Italy.
1864. R. F. Burton, Miss. to Dahome, 19. The Bube, as may be proved by his language, is an aborigine of the mainland.
1879. B. Taylor, Germ. Lit., 3. The aborigines of Germany had their bards, their battle-songs and their sacrificial hymns.
b. fig.
1655. Fuller, Ch. Hist., II. 119. The Aborigines and the Advenae, the old Stock of Students, and the new Store brought in by St. Grimball.
1704. Swift, Battle of Bks. (1711), 224. As to their own Seat, they were Aborigines of it.
2. spec. The natives found in possession of a country by Europeans who have gone thither as colonists.
1789–96. J. Morse, Amer. Geog., I. 594. Calvert, their leader, purchased the rights of the aborigines.
1845. Darwin, Voy. of Nat., xix. 435 (1873). A score of the black aborigines passed by.
1864. Spectator, 31 Dec., 1689. It seems probable that in half a century there will not be one aborigine left in Australia.
1868. Grant Duff, Polit. Surv., 112. From 300,000 to 400,000 aborigines reside within the territory of Liberia.
3. Occas. used also of animals and plants.
1677. Hale, Prim. Orig. Man., II. vii. 199. Whereby it appears that the Brutes were not Aborigines.
1845. Darwin, Voy. of Nat., vi. 119 (1879). I doubt whether any case is on record of an invasion on so grand a scale of one plant over the aborigines.
