海角大神

A聽few weeks ago, U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, a Republican from Louisiana, gave the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump a nickname, using the hashtag #KangarooCourt in a tweet. It鈥檚 an evocative phrase, even if you鈥檙e not sure what it means, and kangaroo itself is, for English, an unusual word.

Kangaroo doesn鈥檛 look like many other English words because it comes from the indigenous Australian language Guugu Yimithirr, although it took scholars a long time to accept that. Even now the Oxford English Dictionary doesn鈥檛 quite buy it, granting only that kangaroo is 鈥渟tated to have been the name in an Australian Aboriginal language.鈥� 聽

The doubt arises because British explorers recorded different words for the same animal. In 1770, Captain James Cook landed in northern Australia and wrote down 鈥淜angooroo or Kanguru.鈥� John Hunter mapped land near modern-day Sydney and learned that the word was 鈥減atagorong.鈥� Lancelot Threlkeld, a missionary working north of Sydney, heard 鈥渕o-a-ne.鈥� Rather than drawing the obvious conclusion, that these are three different words because they come from three different languages, the Oxford English Dictionary prefers to consider the matter unsettled.聽

Linguists and lexicographers agree, though, that the word鈥檚 popular folk etymology is wrong. The story holds that when Cook arrived, he pointed at an animal and asked, 鈥淲hat is this?鈥� His interlocutor responded 鈥渒angaroo,鈥� meaning 鈥淚 don鈥檛 understand,鈥� which Cook took to be the animal鈥檚 name.聽

Despite the Australian antecedents of kangaroo, the kangaroo court was originally an American institution. Merriam-Webster defines it as 鈥渁 mock court鈥� or one 鈥渃haracterized by irresponsible, unauthorized, or irregular status or procedures.鈥� No one knows precisely where the term comes from 鈥� it might have originated during the lawless days of the California gold rush, when miners had to create their own court system to adjudicate disputes over claim jumping. Another theory speculates that these courts earned the name 鈥渒angaroo鈥� because they 鈥渏ump to conclusions.鈥澛�

The term may have been the name for a game. An 1853 book describes an early 鈥渒angaroo court鈥� as entertainment, a mock trial that allowed the people of a tiny Texas town to pretend to be powerful lawyers and judges. Early kangaroo courts were found in 19th-century prisons, in which inmates would lay down rules. In the 20th century, such courts have come to be associated with corrupt politicians, such as Joseph Stalin鈥檚 鈥渒angaroo courts,鈥� which sentenced millions of people to forced labor or death.

Kangaroo courts may have a silly name, but they are no longer funny.