Also wait-a-while. [trans. Cape Da, wacht-een-beetje.] Usually attrib. with thorn, thorn-tree, etc.
a. A name given to various S. African plants and shrubs with humorous reference to their hooked and clinging thorns; e.g., various species of mimosa.
1785. G. Forster, trans. Sparrman’s Voy. Cape G. Hope, I. 236. A new species of callophyllum, which from its catching … fast hold of the traveller with its hooked prickles … is commonly called here wakt een betje, or wait a bit.
1850. R. G. Cumming, Hunter’s Life S. Afr. (ed. 2), I. 152. This variety of mimosa is waggishly termed by the Boers ‘vyacht um bige,’ or wait-a-bit thorns; as they continually solicit the passing traveller not to be in a hurry.
1857. Livingstone, Trav., iii. 61. The ‘wait-a-bit thorn,’ or Acacia detinens.
1863. W. C. Baldwin, Afr. Hunting, vii. 239. The Kaffirs throw in the most virulent ‘wait-a-while’ thorn branches into the pits, to prevent the oxen from trampling.
1899. Bertrand, Kingd. Barotsi, 48. Terrible thickets of various species of thorns, of which the most formidable is the wacht-een-beetje, appropriately interpreted as the ‘wait-a-bit’; a crooked, steely, regular fish-hook of a thorn, that stops and tears everything that comes in its way.
1913. C. Pettman, Africanderisms, s.v. Wacht-en-beetje, The familiar Zizyphus mucronata, W., is popularly known all through Kaffraria and the Eastern Districts as the ‘wait-a-bit thorn tree.’
b. Applied by travellers to different plants of similar character in other parts of the world.
1865. Tristram, Land of Israel, 202. The principal tree was the zizyphus spina-Christi … with long pointed and rather reflex thorns, very strong,—a true wait-a-bit tree.
1894. Dennys, Dict. Malaya, 415. Wait-a-bit. A name conventionally applied to a species of rattan armed with powerful curved thorns.
