cobbra Austral.
(ˈkɒbrə)
Also cobra.
[Aborig. word.]
The head, skull.
| 1832 G. Tipsmill The Snake in Stewart & Keesing Old Bush Songs (1957) 33 They with a stick effect would take Upon your cobra. 1867 ‘Old Boomerang’ Austral. Capers xxiii. 204 The savage cobbler.., with a volley of oaths and slang, said he would crack Christopher's ‘cobbera’. 1881 A. C. Grant Bush-Life in Queensland I. iii. 31 The black fellow who lives in the bush bestows but small attention on his ‘cobra’, as the head is usually called in the pigeon-English which they employ. 1890 ‘R. Boldrewood’ Col. Reformer xiii, Having an empty cobbra, as the blacks say. |