darg mark

Darg isn't a word you hear in common speech anymore. I only know about it because I once lived in a Darghan Street, in Glebe, and a Scots-born friend suggested, speculatively, that the word was the origin of the street name. It is in the OED however, which says 1. a day's work; 2. a definite amount of work, a task and says it is a contraction of Middle English daywerk or daywark. I'm charmed though to learn that it is still in use in the lingo of Axemen in what seems an entirely appropriate usage: It came to be applied to the marks scratched on almost anything to signify that the person concerned had completed his tally ...