Word.ws English Dictionary

flax-stick

flax-stick noun: the flowering stem of the New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax or Phormium cookianum).

Noun

flax-stick (plural flax-sticks)

  1. (New Zealand) The flowering stem of the New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax or Phormium cookianum).
    • Rafts, or canoes, or “catamarans,” are still occasionally improvised by travellers or explorers in primitive parts of New Zealand, e.g. by Haast, who reports constructing “catamarans” of dead trees when flax-sticks were not obtainable.1869, W. Lauder Lindsay, On the Economical Value and Applications of the Leaf-Fibre of New Zealand Flax (Phormium tenax, Forst.): The Journal of Botany, British and Foreign, volume 7, page 46
  2. (Australia, obsolete, slang) A New Zealander.
    • "I always thought Australia was all good country," mused the driver—a flax-stick.1896, Henry Lawson, “His Country–After All”, in While the Billy Boils, Sydney, N.S.W.: Angus and Robertson […], →OCLC, page 51

Forms of flax-stick

pluralflax-sticks
alternative formflax stick

Questions about flax-stick

What does flax-stick mean?
Flax-stick means the flowering stem of the New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax or Phormium cookianum).
What part of speech is flax-stick?
Flax-stick is a noun.
What is the plural of flax-stick?
The plural of flax-stick is flax-sticks.

Words near flax-stick in the dictionary

  1. flax seed
  2. flax seeds
  3. flax-dresser
  4. flax-dressers
  5. flax-leaved daphne
  6. flax-stick
  7. flax-sticks
  8. flaxbird
  9. flaxbush
  10. flaxbushes
  11. Flaxby

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flax-stick (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: EN-AU ck1 flax-stick.ogg.

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