Early Life
Partridge was born in Waimata Valley, near Gisborne, on the North Island of New Zealand to John Thomas Partridge, a grazier, and his wife Ethel Annabella Norris. In 1907 the family moved to Queensland, Australia, where he was educated at the Toowoomba Grammar School. He then studied first classics and then French and English at the University of Queensland. During this time Partridge also taught for three years as a school teacher before enrolling in the Australian Imperial Force in April 1915 and serving in the Australian infantry during the First World War, serving in Egypt, Gallipoli and on the Western Front, before being wounded in the Battle of Pozières. His interest in slang and the "underside" of language is said to date from his wartime experience. Partridge returned to university between 1919 and 1921, when he received his BA.
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“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
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