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Drongo

drongo | ˈdrɒŋɡəʊ | noun (plural drongos or plural drongoes) 

1 A songbird with glossy black plumage and typically a long forked tail and a crest, found in Africa, southern Asia, and Australia.

2 Australian / New Zealand informal. A stupid or incompetent person:

I gave that drongo fifty dollars and he only gave me change for ten!’

Origin

As well as being the name of a bird, found in north-eastern Australia, Drongo was also the name of a racehorse, foaled in 1921, which usually performed poorly, although it was placed a number of times. It was retired in 1925. Thereafter, anyone slow-witted or clumsy was referred to as a ‘drongo’.

The horse was lampooned by the cartoonist, Sam Wells, in a number of drawings depicting ‘Drongo Mk. 1’, in the Melbourne Herald during the early 1920s. The word became nationally used, as a reference to ‘no-hopers’, in the period of World War II.

Sydney poet Len Fox wrote a poem in 1958, ‘Drongo Wasn’t Such a Drongo’, in which he sought to show that the ‘also-rans’—the people who never win and rarely succeed in life—are not to be despised on that account:

Drongo wasn’t such a drongo
But of course the legend grew
And legends are stronger than truth
So everyone believes now
That Drongo was an old camel
Who always ran last.

But some of us remember a colt
Running second in a Derby;
He didn’t look so clumsy
Just for that second…

Sure he never won a race,
Neither did I, mate;
Most of us never win races
And so they call us drongoes.

Wannan, Bill (1979) [1970]. "Drongo". Australian Folklore. Lansdowne Press. p. 200.

“Drongo” went from a racehorse that never won to Aussie slang for a loser - yet its story proves that coming second still beats never running at all.