flax-stick

English

Alternative forms

• flax stick

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

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Noun

flax-stick (plural flax-sticks)

1. (New Zealand) The flowering stem of the New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax or Phormium cookianum).
   • 1869, W. Lauder Lindsay, On the Economical Value and Applications of the Leaf-Fibre of New Zealand Flax (Phormium tenax, Forst.): The Journal of Botany, British and Foreign, volume 7, page 46:

     Rafts, or canoes, or “catamarans,” are still occasionally improvised by travellers or explorers in primitive parts of New Zealand, e.g. by Haast, who reports constructing “catamarans” of dead trees when flax-sticks were not obtainable.

2. (Australia, slang, obsolete) A New Zealander.
   • 1896, Henry Lawson, “His Country–After All”, in While the Billy Boils, Sydney, N.S.W.: Angus and Robertson […], →OCLC, page 51:

     "I always thought Australia was all good country," mused the driver—a flax-stick.