Anyone who lives near a beach might have seen a group of junior lifesavers, also known as nippers. There are a number of meanings for this word, but no clear etymology listed. An interesting and very likely now very much illegal meaning was a ‘young lad on a construction site or in a mine who … Read more
Each week, we have a look at a slang word from Australian English. This week we look at spud. Perhaps the most versatile and popular vegetable on the planet, the spud (or potato, for those not in the know) is a staple of classic Aussie food. From chips to chips, it is part of almost every meal.
While the goon of today is generally understood to be cheap cask wine, this meaning didn’t appear until the 1990s. For at least a decade before this, goon meant a flagon of wine. It is possible that this word came from a jocular pronunciation of flagoon. An offshoot of this word is the classic Aussie … Read more
The humble RSL (Returned Services League of Australia) club can be a mouthful, so in the Aussie tradition, it has been colloquially shortened to ‘rissole’. You may have heard the question “Want to go up the rissole?”, or, for entertainers, to “do the rissoles” is to make a tour of RSL clubs. Rissole has a number … Read more
This is an interesting piece of Sydney history. This turn of phrase means ‘to depart in haste’, and was originally Sydney slang dating back to the 1940s. It referred to the now-defunct trams along the Bondi line which were notoriously fast. It also dates from World War II services slang, when it also meant to go … Read more
As editors of the Macquarie Dictionary, we wear many hats. One of the tasks that comes to us regularly is to create lists of words for spelling bees. This is a monumental undertaking, and one which requires a high level of detail. First, we have the word selection itself There are many thousands of words … Read more
The Gamilaraay (Kamilaroi) people are the Indigenous people of north-eastern NSW and south-western Queensland. They are one of the four largest Indigenous groups in Australia, whose lands traditionally encompassed over 75,000 km2. If you live in NSW, you may have been to Gamilaraay lands – Lightning Ridge, Moree, Tamworth, Narrabri are all on traditional Gamilaraay … Read more
Each week, we have a look at a slang word from Australian English. This week we look at youse. A stalwart and consistently divisive member of the Australian English language, youse appears to be here to stay. This unusual word was first recorded back in the 1890s
Crypto languages are something of a passion of ours. You have arpie-darpie, aygo-paygo, obo language, pig Latin and rechtub kelat (a secret language of butchers!) to name a few. But today, we’re going to talk about one used by schoolchildren called alibi. In this particular language, normal words are modified by adding into each syllable the sounds ‘ullab’; thus … Read more
While it is now more commonly known as a pie floater, a floater is a meat pie served in pea soup. It originated in one of our most prolific states for unusual colloquialisms for food, South Australia. It has been recorded since 1915. Like most Aussie food, this has some controversy attached. Do you have … Read more
