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swimmers


plural noun a swimming costume. Compare bathers, cossie, cozzie, costume, swimsuit, togs.

Contributor's comments: We used swimmers along with bathers in Victoria when we were kids in the 60/70s.

Contributor's comments: [SA informant] Always bathers at our place.

Contributor's comments: "Swimmers" also referred to in Brisbane.

Contributor's comments: [Brisbane informant] We use "swimmers" and "togs" interchangeably. I think it was always "swimmers" at home (my parents are lifelong Queenslanders) until we picked up "togs" at school.

Contributor's comments: I have never heard this term used in Melbourne from 1948 to 1970.

Contributor's comments: I have lived in Albury, where we swam in togs, and then moved to Goulburn where we quickly learned how to wear our swimmers instead, although a few friends wore cossies and others costumes (but never togs)!

Contributor's comments: In Orange all my friends called their swimming gear togs or scungies, for small ones but not shorts or boardies, but my wife from Sydney and our children in Newcastle call them swimmers.

Contributor's comments: "Swimmers" seemed to be by far the preferred word by my teenage years (the '80's) but I do remember using "cozzies" as a younger child. As an English immigrant (came here when I was 5 in 1974) my family used the word "togs" but I quickly learnt that it wasn't to be used outside the family.

Contributor's comments: As a child in North Coast NSW in the 1950's and 1960's my elders were more likely to call them "togs" but that sounded pretty 'common' so we younger ones usually preferred to call them 'swimmers'

Contributor's comments: When I moved to Queensland (Mackay and Redcliffe) in the 1980s, togs was unknown except as a rare term for clothes in general. The Queenslanders all wore "swimmers".

Contributor's comments: I grew up in Newcastle and they were always called swimmers. It was only when I moved that I found out people called them anything else.