must have killed a Chinaman

English

Etymology

Referring to a putative, and otherwise unrecorded, Anglo-Australian superstition that killing a Chinese person brought about bad luck.

Pronunciation
  • Audio (AU)(file)

Phrase

must have killed a Chinaman

  1. (Australia, offensive) A jocular explanation for bad luck.
    • 1925, L. M. Newton, The Story of the Twelfth: A Record of the 12th Battalion, page 132
      It appeared as though someone in the Battalion must have killed a Chinaman, as the weather continued rough and stormy, with strong wind.
    • For more examples of usage of this term, see Citations:must have killed a Chinaman.

References
  • “must have killed a Chinaman”, entry in The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, Eric Partridge, page 393
  • “I must have killed a Chinaman”, entry in A Dictionary of Catch Phrases: British and American, from the sixteenth century to the present day, Eric Partridge & Paul Beale, page 218
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