Lexicon

     The English language collects words enough that one may read a new word each day and never exhaust the lexicon. The word I read today which caught my imagination is larrikin which, of course, has to be added to the spell check dictionary. Here's part of the OED article about larrikin:

     The word seems to have originated in Melbourne not long before 1870; but the story that it was evolved by a reporter from an Irish policeman's pronunciation of larking, heard in a Melbourne police-court in 1869, appears to be a figment, no trace of the incident being found in the local papers of the time. (See Morris, Austral Eng., s.v.) A guess that has been proposed is that it is short for Eng. slang leary kinchen. Wright, Suppl. to E.D.D., cites larrikin ‘a mischievous or frolicsome youth’ from informants in Warwickshire and Worcestershire; see also quot. 1882. Cf. E.D.D., Larack (larack about, to ‘lark’ about), cited from C. C. Robinson's Dial. of Leeds (1861).]