tar-tar
n.— Note: “Toi toi” is a type of grass native to New Zealand, as described here, although there is at least one species of bird native to the country, the North Island tomtit, that is of the subspecies “toitoi.” «“Her father, pretending to be the girl, wrote back to him and said meet me at midnight. Poor old Mr Golder got all dressed up and went to meet his beau but as the paper described it “the arms that beheld him were not those of his beloved.” He copped a tar-tar as it was known in those days.”A tar-tar was a uniquely New Zealand version of tarring and feathering, with toi tois in place of feathers.» —“19th-century paper offers window on another time” by Matthew Stewart Wairarapa Times (New Zealand) Oct. 16, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Ron in Gloverville, South Carolina, wonders about the phrase since hatchet was hammer, which some use to mean “for a long period of time,” as in My family has lived here since hatchet was hammer. Another phrase he’s heard indicating the same thing...