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Termagant Watch with Piers

"Perhaps in the eyes of those who cling to the myth that everything Aboriginal is beyond criticism, naming a 22ha prime port precinct after such a pitiless termagant is a form of retribution for real or imagined wrongs committed by white colonists, but a better role model could have been chosen."
- Piers Akerman, "Hullabaloo about Barangaroo", Sunday Telegraph, 22.10.06

Piers is consistently the most hilarious of the "opinion" writers in the Murdoch comic books, but I have to take my proverbial hat off to him for broadening my knowledge of the English language.

ter‧ma‧gant  /ˈtɜrməgənt/
noun
1. a violent, turbulent, or brawling woman.
2. (initial capital letter) a mythical deity popularly believed in the Middle Ages to be worshiped by the Muslims and introduced into the morality play as a violent, overbearing personage in long robes.
–adjective
3. violent; turbulent; brawling; shrewish.
[Origin: 1175–1225; ME Termagaunt, earlier Tervagaunt, alter. of OF Tervagan name of the imaginary deity]
Source: Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

For a non-Windschuttlesque look at the life of Barangaroo, the Cameraigal woman who was the second wife of Bennelong, start at this item and this page on the City of Sydney website. She has recently been honoured (correctly, in my opinion), by having the East Darling Harbour/Millers Point district of Sydney named for her. See the media release from Frank Sartor.