The baggy green is the cap worn by Australian test cricket players. It is traditionally presented to players before their debut test match, the baggy green has a long and storied history. Sometimes switched to green baggy, this cap has been worn and cherished by players from Bradman to Steve Waugh, right up to members of … Read more
The word deadly with its current meaning was originally coined in the 1900s. It was then adopted into Aboriginal English in the 1970s and from then into general use. Excellent, fantastic, cool: That movie was deadly! It is also used as an adverb, as in: he sang deadly. Interestingly, deadly is also used in Ireland with the same positive meaning. … Read more
Each week, we have a look at a slang word from Australian English. This week we look at wombat-headed. Meaning dull, stupid or block-headed, wombat-headed is a great Aussie insult originating from Ned Kelly’s famous 1879 Jerilderie letter.
We recently received a letter asking about the derivation of the word echidna. Was our iconic spiny anteater connected to the terrifying goddess Echidna of Greek mythology? Echidna comes from New Latin from the Greek word ekhidna meaning ‘viper’. The Greek mythological being was so named because she was half-woman and half-serpent. She was also known as … Read more
Words can be beautiful in the way they look, the way they sound and in what they mean. Some words hit the trifecta of beauty, and others have only one. And still more are only beautiful to some people. We have a pretty good idea of what we like to see in words, but it’s … Read more
Each week, we have a look at a slang word from Australian English. A barney is an argument or a fight. It is thought to have come across from a British dialect, though it isn’t certain how exactly it came to be. The word is also part of Polari, a slang language popular in British theatrical and comedy circles, particularly gay circles,
Each week, we have a look at a slang word from Australian English. This week we look at yakka. The word yakka means hard work, especially manual labour. This has been Australian slang since the 1880s but is one of many words we have in Australian English to originate from an Aboriginal language.
Each week, we have a look at a slang word from Australian English. This week we look at boomer. There are a lot of very different meanings for the word boomer in colloquial Australian English. The most common is as something large, like a crashing wave. But it is also popularly known to mean something successful or popular, as a party or song. A newer reference, unrelated to these two, is simply as the shortened version of baby boomer.
There are many names for this stalwart feature of an Australian childhood. Running barefoot across the grass is almost guaranteed to result in a bindi-eye in the sole of your foot. The bindi-eye is originally native to South America and was introduced to Australia in the early 20th century. Now known all over the country as … Read more
It’s that time again, when we look through our words to watch, often submitted by you for consideration in the Macquarie Dictionary. We are interested in hearing about words from all walks of life, be it from your profession, from everyday slang, from something your kids have said that you just couldn’t wrap your head around, we want … Read more
