Occasionally when reading early literature, you come across a common word which seems to have a new meaning, though in these cases, that actually means an old one. One such word is bounce and its derivative bounceable.

I first came across it in Lt. Col. Thomas McDonnell’s pamphlet justifying his actions in the Pātea district of the North Island West Coast  in 1866[1]. McDonnell led the campaign against Māori resisting Government surveying and subsequent settlement in a region north of Whanganui. At one stage he sets out to confront the hapu of the Pakakohi iwi in Pātea who had driven out the surveyors. In a village he meets them, finding the great chief Titokawaru amongst them. He told  them ‘that their wisest plan was to submit and give no further trouble, as even my patience had a limit. They were bounceable; insisted that they would not let the surveys go on, and set me at defiance.’ He signals his men, and ‘instantly their glittering bayonets in the bright moonlight had a wonderful effect.’

The term arose again in the book of McDonnell’s contemporary and fellow soldier, Lt. Col John St John, published in 1873.[2] Part I of his book comprises the publication of the memoirs of the flax trader Charles Marshall, who arrived at the Waikato Heads in 1830 and lived in the lower Waikato region until his death in 1892. Marshall uses the word ‘bounce’ as in ‘Captain Payne attempted to carry things with a high hand, but the master of the “Samuel” was not to be intimidated, and after a great deal of bounce on their part, we shipped the flax on board our vessel and prepared for sea.’

Walter Gudgeon, in 1903, also used the word in a discussion on the Arawa migration ‘…It is probable that these Waitaha, like all the ‘heavenly migration’, were a very bounceable lot, for the Wairarapa soon found them objectionable, and began to meditate their destruction;…’[3]

There are doubtless other instances of its use in 19^th C New Zealand writing, such as in a story by Thomas Cottle published in The New Zealand Illustrated Magazine: ‘He was bounceable and bossy enough for that or anything else.’[4]  It seems to have been in reasonably common usage in the wider 19^th C literature and is recorded in the dictionaries as a Victorian slang word, denoting swagger and boasting, with an implication of lying.[5] The OED records the first use of bounceable in 1831 by the lawyer and writer Samuel Warren. It appears in Dicken’s Great Expectations (1861). In Chapter 24,  John Wemmick, the clerk of Pip’s guardian Mr Jaggers, is contemplating and talking to a death mask:  ‘…and you said you could write Greek. Yah, Bounceable! What a liar you were! I never met such a liar as you!’

Well, its of no great importance, but these little sidesteps and byways can be interesting, and in this case, the use of what was originally a slang term easing its way into the literature, and then out, gives a tiny insight into the characters using them.

[1] McDonnell, T.  An explanation of the principal causes which led to the present war on the west coast of New Zealand; in defence of the action taken by Lieut.-Col., Thos. McDonnell, whilst commanding the Patea Field Force, with a suggestion as to future operations. Wanganui: New Zealand, Times, 1869. p. 20.

[2] St. John, J.H.H. (Lt Col.) Pakeha rambles through Maori lands. Wellington: Robert Burrett. 1873. p.33.

[3] Gudgeon, W.E., The Whence of the Māori, in JPS, 1903, Vol.12, pp. 58-61. Cited in: Prendergast-Tarena,  Eruera Ropata. He Atua, He Tipua, He Takata Rānei: The Dynamics of Change in South Island Māori Oral Traditions. MA thesis, University of Canterbury, 2008.

⁴ E.g. Hotten, John Camden, The Slang Dictionary, Etymological, Historical and Anecdotal. London, Chatto & Windus, 1913.

[4] The New Zealand Illustrated Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 1, April, 1899. ‘Her Long-lost Brother’. p.54. Cottle was the editor of the Magazine.