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dixie


noun a small container (approx. 100 ml) of ice-cream. Compare bucket, dandy.

Contributor's comments: I have heard this used in Brisbane. Wasn't/Isn't it a brand name?

Contributor's comments: This was also army slang (1960's) for a small metal mess dish, usually taken on bivouac, etc.

Editor's comments: In the ice-cream bucket sense it may have been a brandname, though we don't have any evidence of this. However, the word itself originally comes from the Indian language Hindi and is generally applied to small metal containers for cooking and eating food when camping, etc. ONLY the "ice-cream bucket" sense is a regionalism.

Contributor's comments: Dixie is an old military expression. It refers to the two nested rectangular aluminium food preparation and eating containers. Together with knife fork and spoon (eating irons) they formed one's mess kit (as distinct from the mess kit which one wore to a do).

Contributor's comments: Dixie was a brand name used by Peter's Ice Cream in the 50's for their small bucket of ice cream.

Contributor's comments: Dixie was (and maybe still is) the brand name of vanilla ice cream which came in a small tub. It was made by one of Peters or Streets, not sure which.

Contributor's comments: 'Dixie' or 'dixie cup' was definitely a brand name for a small tub of vanilla icecream, in Melbourne in the 1980's. They were sold with a small wooden spoon, and were made by one of the major icecream companies (Streets/Peters/Pauls - I can't remember which).

Contributor's comments: 'Dixie' may have been a brand name originally, but from the 1950s it fairly soon became generic in Melbourne to mean an ice cream sold in a little tub made from strengthened paper or cardboard or later of plastic.

Contributor's comments: I knew the word dixie in two senses - as a general term for a small tub of ice cream like the Peter's Dixie Cup, and as a dish. Dad was an Army cook and referred to doing the dishes as "dixie bashing".

Contributor's comments: We always used to be given a dixie of ice cream each when our parents took us to the pictures in the 50s. I rmember the word 'dixie' was printed on the lid and sides of the dixie. The ones we had were made by Peters. It might have been a brand name, but I always thought they put 'dixie' on it because that's what it was. Like putting 'lemonade' on a can of lemonade.