Laughing jackass is the old Australian nickname for the laughing kookaburra — named for its famously raucous call that sounds unsettlingly like a person laughing uncontrollably. The term predates kookaburra as the mainstream name, and while it's now marked as obsolete in formal usage, it captures something the modern name doesn't: the bird's genuinely absurd, almost mocking sound echoing across the bush at dawn. In older Australian literature and speech, the laughing jackass was a quintessential sound of the outback.
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Aussie and Kiwi vocabulary — bogan, daggy, brekkie, sheila, bach, jandals — the whole Antipodean lexicon, including outback dialect, surf and beach culture, and Sydney/Melbourne street slang.
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Every morning the laughing jackass started up at six, waking the entire camp with its ridiculous cackle.
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(AU, obsolete) The laughing kookaburra, .
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