poke borax
English
Alternative forms
- poke borack
- poke borak
- poke the borax
Etymology
From poke borak or poke borack, probably by substitution of the unfamiliar word, by the law of Hobson-Jobson.
Pronunciation
Audio (AU) (file)
Verb
poke borax (third-person singular simple present pokes borax, present participle poking borax, simple past and past participle poked borax)
- (intransitive, Australia, New Zealand, often with "at") To ridicule.
- 2004, C. K. Stead, Mansfield: A Novel, unnumbered page,
- Maybe the geezer was a major really. Or maybe he was poking borax. That was the trouble with toffs from outside the area – you didn't know where you were with them.
- 1948, Ruth Park, The Harp in the South, 2009, Penguin, unnumbered page,
- ‘Your mother didn′t have any call to go slinging off about me moey, anyway,’ complained Hughie suddenly, and from thirty years ago steamed up a resentment that had never really gone off the boil. ‘She always did have a tongue in her head that would scare the hair off a coconut.’
- ‘Don′t go poking borax at the dead,’ remonstrated Mumma, then she added softly, ‘It was that nice, too, all black and silky.’
- 1955, Helen Mary Wilson, Land of My Children, page xiii,
- "Now you′re poking borax at me, Mother! Making me out to be a romancer and historian. Aren′t I a farmer?"
- 1975, New Zealand House of Representatives, Parliamentary Debates, page 3399,
- Hon. S. J. Faulkner—You see, as long as the people concerned are not political, it is O.K. But members opposite want to poke borax at people who dare to have a different view from that of the Leader of the Opposition.
- 1991, Maud Cahill, Christine Dann (editors), Changing Our Lives: Women Working in the Women′s Liberation Movement, 1970-1990, Bridget Williams Books, New Zealand, page 74,
- It was an acceptable way of poking borax at unions for being so bloody backward.
- 2004, C. K. Stead, Mansfield: A Novel, unnumbered page,