EXAMPLES FROM THE WEB FOR KANGAROO
But in the kangaroo figure, the burden is slightly shifted and naught is amiss.
A little higher in the scale stand the kangaroo and the opossum.
He jumps here and there like a kangaroo when he goes on one of his scouting trips.
"Only I did so want to dress up as a kangaroo," mourned Joan dolefully.
But the most interesting event of the day, by far, was the kangaroo hunt.
Nothing could be more astonishing than the enormous bounds of the kangaroo.
There are now very few, if any, kangaroo in this immediate neighbourhood.
"Prod him with the icicle," said the Kangaroo to the Polar Bear.
The only game of any size was the kangaroo and a few species of birds.
The kangaroo also is proper to Australia, and there are other animals of like kind.
WORD ORIGIN
1770, used by Capt. Cook and botanist Joseph Banks, supposedly an aborigine word from northeast Queensland, Australia, usually said to be unknown now in any native language. However, according to Australian linguist R.M.W. Dixon ("The Languages of Australia," Cambridge, 1980), the word probably is from Guugu Yimidhirr (Endeavour River-area Aborigine language) /gaNurru/ "large black kangaroo."
Kangaroo court is American English, first recorded 1850 in a Southwestern context (also mustang court), from notion of proceeding by leaps.