Also 8–9 bomarang, bomerang, boomering. [Adoption or modification of the native name in a lang. of the aborigines of N. S. Wales.
Collins (Judge Advocate of the colony when founded in 1788) collected a short vocabulary of Port Jackson words, in which wo-mur-rāng occurs among ‘names of clubs.’ (He has also wo-mer-ra the throwing stick, which some later writers erroneously identify with the boomerang.) In a short vocabulary of the extinct language of George’s River, Botany Bay, printed by Ridley, Kámilarói 103, are womrā ‘throwing stick for spear,’ būmarin ‘boomerang.’ Boomerang was given as the Port Jackson term by Capt. King in 1827; its exact relation to wo-mur-rāng and būmarin, and the relations of these to each other can perhaps not now be determined. A very graphic account of the use of the weapon (described as ‘a bent, edged waddy resembling slightly a Turkish scimitar’) is in the Sydney Gazette of 23 Dec. 1804: the name boomerang has not been found in that paper up to 1823.]
An Australian missile weapon: a curved piece of hard wood from two to three feet long, with a sharp edge along the convexity of the curve. It is so made as to describe complex curves in its flight, and can be thrown so as to hit an object in a different direction from that of projection, or so as to return to or beyond the starting point.
[1798. Collins, Acct. N. S. Wales, Vocab. ‘names of Spears and other instruments,’ Can-ni-cull, Car-ru-wāng, Wo-mur-rāng, Names of clubs.]
1827. Capt. King, Narr. Surv. Coasts Austral., I. 355. Boomerang is the Port Jackson term for this weapon, and may be retained for want of a more descriptive name.
1830. Mechanic’s Mag., XIII. 430. Captain Cook, when at Botany Bay, having seen the bomarang, concluded that it was a wooden sword.
1830. Proc. R. Geog. Soc., I. 27. The curl or boomering is seldom used as a weapon [in W. Australia].
1834. L. E. Threlkeld, Austral. Gram., Vocab. Hunter Riv. Tur-ru-ma, an instrument of war, called by Europeans Boomering of a half-moon shape, which, when thrown … returns forming a circle in its orbit from and to the thrower.
1834. G. Bennett, Wand. N. S. Wales, &c. 116. The males were armed with spears, clubs, and the ‘womera’ or ‘bomerang.’
1838. S. Ferguson in Trans. R. Irish Acad., XIX. 22 (paper), On the Antiquity of the Kiliee or Boomerang.
1871. Tylor, Prim. Cult., I. 60. The Australian boomerang has been claimed as derived from some hypothetical high culture.
fig. 1845. Holmes, Modest Req., Poems (1884), 42. Like the strange missile which the Australian throws, Your verbal boomerang slaps you on the nose.
1870. Lowell, Among my Bks., Ser. I. (1873), 219. The boomerang of argument, which one throws in the opposite direction of what he means to hit.
