The Australian National Dictionary Centre is jointly funded by Oxford University Press Australia and the Australian National University to research all aspects of Australian English and to publish Australian dictionaries and other works.
CONCISE
A reminder that the fourth edition of the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary was published in October. The vocabulary of international English continues to expand rapidly. Computing and electronic communication are still the areas in which the expansion is most clearly taking place. The previous edition of this dictionary (1997) included the 'new' terms Internet and World Wide Web . The present edition recognises the appearance of DVD, SMS, and text message . From the semantic area of computing and new technology also come copyleft, cybercafe, cyberphobia, cypherpunk, datacasting, e-book, mouse potato, predictive text, vapourware, webcam, webcast, widget, XML, and zip . The terrorism and wars of recent years have provided terms such as asymmetrical warfare, embedded, ground zero, 9/11, sky marshal, and weapon of mass destruction . Sport has provided terms such as air ball, blood doping, canyoning, criterium, fastskin, sky surfing, and zorbing . Yet the new words come from all spheres, as illustrated by the following selection: asylum seeker, barista, call centre, carbon credit, cattle class, claymation, economic migrant, economy class syndrome, erythropoietin, fire ant, genetically modified, glycaemic index, reality television, SARS, transgenic, 24/7, and wedge politics . American slang continues to be an important influence on English worldwide--this edition includes, for example, ho, booty, schmatte, trailer trash, and yada . Yet Australian English continues to produce its own terms. Some of the Australianisms that were not in the previous edition include aspirational voter, bevan, branch stacking, budgie smugglers, Canberra bashing, chop chop, clog wog, drop bear, esky lid, irukandji, mates rates, mugachino, netta netball, roo ball, scroggin, secret men's business, sluggos, stolen generation(s), and walla rugby .
CROOK IN TALLAROOK
G.A. Wilkes in A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms describes the phrase Things are crook in Tallarook as 'a catchphrase for any adverse situation'. Such phrases containing place names are very common in Australian English, and Wilkes lists the following: 'Bugger all at Blackall'; 'There's no work at Bourke'; 'Got the arse at Bulli Pass'; 'No lucre at Echuca'; 'In jail at Innisfail'; 'Things are weak at Julia Creek'; 'Things are crook at Muswellbrook'; 'The girls are bandy at Urandangie'. Sidney Baker in The Australian Language lists a number of these and some others: 'Got a feed at the Tweed'; 'No feedin' at Eden'; 'Everything's wrong at Wollongong; 'Might find a berth in Perth'. He traces these expressions back to the depression of the 1930s, when they had very real meaning for people travelling about the country in search of work. A radio caller offered 'There's nothin' doin' at Araluen'. Do any readers know of similar phrases?
DINKS
The difficulties we have in finding written evidence for some colloquial Australian words is well illustrated by the regional terms for 'a lift on a bicycle (or a horse) ridden by another'. The term known Australia-wide is dink, but there are regional variations. In southern New South Wales it can be dub, and in the area between Mildura and Hay pug appears. In north-eastern New South Wales there is evidence for bar. In South Australia we find donkey and dinky . Apart from dink, these terms have only very rarely been discovered in written sources. Does anyone have any evidence for them in books, magazines, newspapers, etc.?
FATHER OF FEDERATION
Sir Henry Parkes is now popularly known as the Father of Federation . But was he always so known? A 1901 book on the federation movement comments: 'The statue of Sir Henry Parkes as the Father of Federation was appropriately decorated, and bore his motto, "One People One Destiny".' The title is therefore very old, but our records appear to indicate that in the following eighty or so years the title was largely forgotten, and that it was only after the Bicentenary celebrations of 1988 that the title was resurrected. Is this true, or is it that our records are inadequate?
FOREIGN ORDERS
In 1996 the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption published a Practical Guide to Corruption Prevention . One of its hypothetical descriptions of the development of corruption in the workplace began in this way: 'Bob works as a fitter in the engineering division of a large government department. He is a conscientious worker and his performance reports have always been above average. The manager of the engineering division is a vintage car enthusiast and president of a car club. He often brings his vehicle parts to the workshop and has some of the fitters work on them. Bob had no major objection to this for a time. However, his view began to change when the manager's foreign order jobs started to take priority over the real work of the section.' Foreign order was a new term to me, though I understand that it has been around for some time as a euphemism for using the resources of one's workplace to do private work. We would be grateful for any pre-1996 printed evidence of the term.
DOUBLE PLUGGERS
Towards the end of an interview Prime Minister Howard did with a Darwin radio station in August 2003, the presenters gave the prime minister 'a pair of genuine Noonamah Pub double pluggers' as an indication of what people might be able to buy with the $4 a week tax cut they received in the Budget. How common is the term double pluggers ? In July 2002 the Western Australian ABC reported that as part of the Year of the Outback there was to be a 'thong muster' at Carnarvon: 'Forget the cattle, sheep, and donkeys--it's time to rustle up those old double pluggers--dust off the ole flip flops and send them to Carnarvon for what's believed to be the world's first Great Aussie thong muster.' So we now know that double pluggers are thongs, though it is interesting that this news item uses the American term flip-flops (and we have had some recent evidence that the New Zealand term jandals is being used in Sydney!). But double pluggers are not your ordinary thongs. A caller to ABC Radio Northern Tasmania described them as the 'Rolls Royce of thongs'--apparently they have two anchor points for the thong on each side of the base. Can anyone point us to written evidence for this term before the mid 1990s?
STACKS ON
We have been looking at the phrase stacks on the mill . As a cry in a schoolyard game, where children pile up on top of a victim, the chant is sometimes expanded to stacks on the mill, more on still . Recently, we have seen the phrase abbreviated simply to stacks on! The phrase is also used in descriptions of ball games, especially Aussie Rules, when a number of players pile up in attempting to get at the ball. The children's game is possibly a survival of a game formerly played in Cheshire, which 'consisted in getting a man down on the ground and then others falling on the top of him till there was a complete pile or stack of men' (English Dialect Dictionary, 1912). The original name of the game was 'more sacks to the mill', and 'sacks' appears to have been corrupted at some stage to 'stacks'.
BRUCE MOORE
DIRECTOR