Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive c6.41

c6.41

Other terms again are corruptions, more or less violent, of Oriental words and phrases which have put on an English mask. Such are maund, fool's rack, bearer, cot, boy, belly-band, Penang-lawyer, buckshaw, goddess (in the Malay region, representing Malay gādis, ‘a maiden’), compound, college-pheasant, chopper, summer-head,* eagle-wood, jackass-copal, bobbery, Upper Roger (used in a correspondence given by Dalrymple, for Yuva Raja, the ‘Young King,’ or Caesar, of Indo-Chinese monarchies), Isle-o'-Bats (for Allāhābād or Ilahābāz as the natives often call it), hobson-jobson (see Preface), St. John's. The last proper name has at least three applications. There is “St. John's” in Guzerat, viz. Sanjān, the landing-place of the Parsee immigration in the 8th century; there is another “St. John's” which is a corruption of Shang-Chuang, the name of that island off the southern coast of China whence the pure and ardent spirit of Francis Xavier fled to a better world; there is the group of “St. John's Islands” near Singapore, the chief of which is properly Pulo-Sikajang.