Australian National Dictionary Centre
Research School of Humanities
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Australian National Dictionary Centre
Research School of Humanities
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Australian Words: H-Rhappy little vegemiteAn Australian, especially a young one. The phrase comes from a 1950s advertising jingle for the yeast-based spread Vegemite. The jingle began: ‘We're happy little vegemites, as bright as bright can be we, We all enjoy our vegemite for breakfast, lunch, and tea'. The phrase is often used ironically: Come on, you happy little vegemites, get to work! Back to Index of Australian Words hard word: put the hard word onAsk forcefully for something in the expectation that you will not be refused. Originally the phrase was used of a man propositioning a woman, and was first recorded in 1923. It is now also applied to any manner of heavy-handed requests—'Michelle really put the hard word on me for a loan of the car'. Back to Index of Australian Words Hills hoistThe hills hoist is a rotary clothes line fitted with a hoist that is operated by a crown and pinion winding mechanism. In Australia Lance Hill is commonly thought to have invented the rotary clothes hoist, but he adapted the existing design in 1946 by including his own winding mechanism. The name hills hoist is used generically in Australia for any rotary clothes line. As a symbol, the hills hoist has both positive and negative connotations in Australian culture. As a positive symbol it featured in the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics: ‘The cultural symbols of our backyard suburbia—the Hills Hoist and the lawn mower—are so respectably well entrenched that they featured at the Olympics.’ (Australian 7 October 2000). As a negative symbol it stands for the dreary sameness and ordinariness of Australian suburbia. In an interview in the Sun-Herald in 2007 Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage explains what would have been the Dame’s fate if she had not met Barry: ‘I would still be in a suburban house, I might even be dead ...I would have been up to my wrists in grey water with peas and mutton fat floating in it. I would have been staring through chipped venetian blinds at rusted Hills hoists and broken plastic toys. I would be locked into the rather sad Valium-infested life of so many women’. Back to Index of Australian Words hoonA lout or a hooligan, especially a young male who drives dangerously, and likes to show off his hotted-up car. The origin of the word is unknown. In the 1960s and 1970s it was also used to describe a standover man who protected the interests of pimps and prostitutes, and was sometimes used to describe the pimp himself. Back to Index of Australian Words Hughie: send it down Hughie!Hughie is the rain god, and this appeal (first recorded in 1912) comes from farmers when rain arrives after a long drought. Recently surfers have used it, imploring the weather god for good waves. Theories about the origin of the word Hughie range from alterations of the names Jupiter, Zeus, or Yahweh, to the classical Greek huei ‘it is raining’. Back to Index of Australian Words illywhackerIn Australian English an illywhacker (or illywacker) is a small-time confidence trickster. The origin of the term is unknown. Sidney Baker in The Australian Language (1945) suggested that the first part of the word may be a corruption of spieler. Our earliest written evidence for the term occurs in Kylie Tennant's The Battlers (1941):
This is a term which was becoming obsolescent in Australian English, but it was given new life when Peter Carey used it as the title of his 1985 novel. In that novel, we find the following passage:
Back to Index of Australian Words iron lung: wouldn’t work in an iron lungExtraordinarily lazy. The phrase derives from the artificial respirator that kept polio patients alive by ‘breathing’ for them in the days when up to ten thousand people annually were affected by poliomyelitis (‘infantile paralysis’) in Australia. When vaccinations became routine in the mid-1950s, the fear of polio disappeared. Barry Humphries commented in 1974: ‘Work! Brits couldn’t even spell it. Bloody poms couldn’t work in an iron lung’. Back to Index of Australian Words jackerooThe word jackeroo was originally a Queensland term referring to a white man who lived beyond the bounds of close settlement. Later, a jackeroo was 'a young man (frequently English and of independent means) seeking to gain experience by working in a supernumerary capacity on a sheep or cattle station'. A jackeroo is now 'a person working on such a station with a view to acquiring the practical experience and management skills desirable in a station owner or manager'. The word can also be used as a verb, meaning 'to work as a jackeroo'. The term jilleroo is used for a female jackeroo. In 1895 A. Meston in Geographic History of Queensland proposed an Aboriginal origin for the term:
The etymology proposed by Meston appears to be without foundation. There is no confirmatory evidence of a bird name tchaceroo in the Brisbane language, or of anything like this being applied to missionaries. Is it possible that the term has an English origin? The personal name Jack is often used in contexts of manual work (e.g. a device for lifting heavy objects) and appears in such idioms as a jack of all trades. This perhaps fits the later meanings of jackeroo, but unfortunately it does not explain the original Queensland meaning. In 1875 Campbell & Wilks in The Early Settlement of Queensland write:
The jury is still out on this term. Is it possible that it is a Queensland Aboriginal term not for 'crow shrike' but for 'stranger'? Back to Index of Australian Words Jacky HoweA navy or black singlet cut nearly to the waist under the arms to give freedom of movement. The Jacky Howe is worn especially by shearers and other rural workers. It was named after the style of singlet worn by shearer John Robert (‘Jacky’) Howe who established a world shearing record by hand-shearing 321 sheep in 7 hours and 40 minutes at Alice Downs, Queensland, in the 1890s. His world record stood until 1950 when it was broken by a shearer using a machine. Back to Index of Australian Words jumbuckJumbuck is an Australian word for a 'sheep'. It is best known from Banjo Paterson's use of it in Waltzing Matilda. The two earliest appearances of the term show Aborigines using it in pidgin English:
The origin of the word is not known. It may possibly be from an Aboriginal language, or it may be an Aboriginal alteration of an English phrase such as jump up. Some suggested etymologies are very fanciful indeed. In 1896 a writer in the Bulletin suggested:
Whatever the case, jumbuck was a prominent word in the pidgin used by early settlers and Aborigines to communicate with one another, and was thence borrowed into many Australian Aboriginal languages as the name for the introduced animal, the sheep. It also found its way into Australian English as a word for `sheep':
Back to Index of Australian Words kooriThe word koori is now well established in Australian English, but it continues to cause confusion and misunderstanding. Many Aborigines dislike the terms 'Aborigine' and 'Aboriginal' since these terms have been foisted on them, and they carry a lot of negative cultural baggage. Not surprisingly, they have looked for alternative words, and instead of `Aborigine' they prefer to use the word for a 'person' from a local language. In order to understand the history of the word koori we need to bear in mind the fact that when the Europeans arrived here there were about 250 languages spoken in Australia. Way back in the past, they were no doubt related, but most of them were as different from one another as English is different from Italian or Hindi. Some languages of south-east Australia (parts of New South Wales and Victoria) had a word - coorie, kory, kuri, kooli, koole - which meant 'person' or 'people'. In the 1960s, in the form koori, it came to be used by Aborigines of these areas to mean 'Aboriginal people' or 'Aboriginal person'. It was a means of identification. But because of the wide variety of Aboriginal languages and cultures, koori has not gained Australia-wide acceptance, being confined to most of New South Wales and to Victoria. Other terms are preferred in other regions: Murri over most of south and central Queensland, Bama in north Queensland, Nunga in southern South Australia, Nyoongah around Perth, Mulba in the Pilbara region, Wongi in the Kalgoorlie region, Yamitji in the Murchison River region, Yolngu in Arnhem Land, Anangu in central Australia, and Yuin on the south coast of New South Wales. For a while people of Tasmanian Aborigines called themselves koories, and then Tasmanian koories to distinguish themselves from the mainland koories. Recently, we have gathered evidence for the term muttonbird koories, a reference to the importance of mutton-birding to their traditional way of life, especially on the islands off the Tasmanian coast. More recently, the tribal or language term Palawa is increasingly being used. Back to Index of Australian Words kylieMost people associate the term kylie with the female personal name (as in Kylie Minogue). In Western Australia, however, it is a term for what is known elsewhere as a `boomerang'. The word was borrowed into Australian English from Nyungar, an Aboriginal language spoken over a large extent of south-western Western Australia, including present-day Perth, Albany, and Esperance. The word also occurs in other western Australian languages. The word first appears in English in G.F. Moore's Diary of Ten Years Eventful Life of an Early Settler in Western Australia (published in 1884, but referring to an 1835 diary entry):
While early writers use various spellings (as with Moore's kiley), in the twentieth century the spelling kylie is standard. The female personal name Kylie may be based on this word. See also the entry for boomerang. Back to Index of Australian Words lairyLairy is widely used in Australia to mean either `flashily dressed, showy' or `socially unacceptable'. Lairy is thought to have come into Australian English around the end of the nineteenth century from the British slang term leery, meaning `wide awake, knowing, sharp, streetwise'. The Australian National Dictionary records the first written use of the term as September 1898 when the Melbourne journal, Tocsin, described someone thus: Height, about 5' 6 1/2in.; style `lairy'. Shop made suit, tight fit and cheap. Flower in slouched hat, well over eyes... The precise spelling of lairy was not immediately apparent, and for many years the variants leary and leery were common. These appear now to have faded away. Despite the uncertainty of its spelling, lairy nonetheless quickly became a standard term in Australian English, and, from the early twentieth century, writers felt able to use it without the need for quotation marks. In 1907 for example C.W. Chandler wrote in Darkest Adelaide: Sitting on the seat with him was a nice specimen of the Australian larrikin. Not so leery, perhaps, as his prototypes of Melbourne and Sydney, but a choice specimen of his class nevertheless. The popularity of the adjective lairy quickly spawned a noun and a verb to match. The noun lair, meaning `one who displays vulgarity, esp. in dress or behaviour; a show-off; a larrikin' was in use by the 1920s as in C.E. Sayers, Jumping Double: A hit behind the ear from one of those back street lairs. And it remains in use today, often in the collocation mug lair, applied to someone supposed to be both stupid and vulgar, as in the description published in The Australian in August 1982 of a particular Carlton half-forward flanker as `a mug lair and a show pony.' The verb lair is most frequently used as a verb phrase in combination with up to mean `behave in the manner of a lair,' and has produced another adjectival use as in G. Savage, The House Tibet (1989): At Legal Aid I got landed with this callous bitch all laired up with these big shoulder pads and earrings like baby crocodiles. By the 1950s the verb had produced a new extended form, lairise, with an identical meaning. In 1960 for example the Northern Territory News commented: All they seem to think of these days is lairizing around in ten-gallon hats, flash, colored shirts, gabardine riding breeches and polished riding boots chasing a bit of fluff. And in 1987 The Australian, in its description of a football match, said: Certain players... instead of doing the percentage things... turned it into a bit of show-off time and started lairising. Back to Index of Australian Words lay-byA way of purchasing something by making a deposit and paying instalments, without interest, until the full amount is paid. The retailer lays the article by until payment is complete. The lay-by system first appeared in 1926. By the 1960s, shops extolled customers to ‘Lay-by now!’ but the introduction of credit cards in the 1970s changed buying patterns. Back to Index of Australian Words life wasn’t meant to be easyA catchphrase popularised by Malcolm Fraser (Prime Minister 1975–83) and later attributed by him to the British playwright George Bernard Shaw. The phrase is now used as a stock response to complaints or whinges of any kind—‘I have to take the kids to soccer training every night this week’. ‘Well, life wasn’t meant to be easy!’ Shaw’s full quotation is 'life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful’. Back to Index of Australian Words light on the hillA symbol of the political objectives of the Australian Labor party. In 1949 Prime Minister Ben Chifley spoke of the Labor goal of social justice as ‘the light on the hill, which we aim to reach by working for the betterment of mankind’. Since then the light on the hill has become a catchphrase in Australian politics, used to evoke traditional Labor values. Back to Index of Australian Words little Aussie battlerIn Australia a battler is a person who struggles for a livelihood, and who displays great determination in so doing. This sense is first recorded in 1896 in a Henry Lawson story. Such a person is now often described as a little Aussie battler, a phrase first recorded in 1979. Back to Index of Australian Words long paddockA public road with grass edge that is used by graziers to feed stock. The long paddock is used extensively in times of drought to keep animals alive. ‘On William Hovell Drive, to enable the cattle to find some feed in these difficult times using the ''long paddock principle'', a farmer has electrified an area on the side of the road for the protection of their stock to allow them to graze.’ (Canberra Times 19 February 2007). The term was first recorded in 1929. Back to Index of Australian Words mad as a cut snakeCrazy or angry. The two senses of the phrase derive from the fact that ‘mad’ has two main senses—‘crazy’ and ‘angry’. The ‘crazy’ sense is illustrated by ‘that bloke wearing a teapot on his head is as mad as a cut snake’, and the angry sense is illustrated by ‘be careful of the boss this afternoon, he’s as mad as a cut snake’. Back to Index of Australian Words magic puddingA never-ending or endlessly renewable source. This is often used in a political context: the minister's development fund is not a magic pudding. The phrase comes from a famous Australian children's book, Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding (1918), in which the pudding renews itself as soon as slices are cut out of it. Back to Index of Australian Words mallee bull: fit as a mallee bullExtremely strong and healthy. A mallee bull is one that lives in mallee country—poor, dry country where small scrubby eucalypts called ‘mallee’ grow. Any creature that survives such difficult conditions would have to be tough and fit. ‘Forty pushups every morning Kev—you’ll be fit as a mallee bull’. The word ‘mallee’ probably comes from an Aboriginal language of western Victoria. Back to Index of Australian Words manchesterHousehold linen, and the department of a shop where such goods are sold. The city of Manchester in northern England was the centre of the English cotton industry in the 1700s and 1800s, and the term manchester arose from that association. London sales assistants are reputed to be quite baffled by Australian customers enquiring where in the store to find manchester. Back to Index of Australian Words Melba: do a MelbaReturn from retirement to make a number of ‘farewell’ appearances. The phrase refers to Australian operatic soprano Dame Nellie Melba (Helen Porter Mitchell) 1861–1931, whose stage name derived from her birthplace, Melbourne. She announced her retirement in 1924, but gave ‘farewell’ performances at Covent Garden in 1926, in Sydney, Melbourne, and Geelong in 1928, and then sang in England over the next two years. Back to Index of Australian Words moombaMoomba is the name of a carnival held annually in Melbourne from 1955. One of its distinctive features is a procession of floats etc. through the streets of the city. The term is popularly regarded as being an Aboriginal word meaning 'let's get together and have fun'. Thus C. McGregor in Profile of Australia (1966) writes:
In 1969 Louise Hercus in The Languages of Victoria sounded a warning:
Victorian Aboriginal languages with the word mum for 'bottom, anus' include Wuywurung and Wemba-wemba. In 1981 Barry Blake in his Australian Aboriginal Languages spelt out the etymology in more detail:
Back to Index of Australian Words moz: put the moz onTo put an evil influence on a person; to jinx. Moz is an abbreviated form of mozzle, a borrowing from Hebrew mazzal meaning ‘star or luck’. It probably came into Australian English via German Yiddish speakers. First recorded 1924. Back to Index of Australian Words mullet: like a stunned mulletDazed, confused, bewildered. The phrase, first recorded in the 1950s, alludes to the goggle-eyed stare (and sometimes gaping mouth) of a fish that has been recently caught and made unconscious. A person typically looks like a stunned mullet as the result of a sudden shock or surprise. Back to Index of Australian Words nashoCompulsory military training, as introduced under the National Service Act of 1951. It is also a name for a person who underwent National Service under the Act. The word nasho is an abbreviation of national with an added ‘o’, a common feature of Australian word formation—compare garbo (‘garbage collector’), journo (‘journalist’), and milko (‘milk man’). In the past nasho was seen as a derogatory term within the permanent military force: ‘our platoon commander is a second lieutenant, or one pipper, who’s a Nasho himself, a 90-day wonder (as the Duntroon and Portsea graduates call them (Glade Within the Grove by David Foster, 1996). The term was first recorded in 1953, but it is especially associated with those national servicemen who fought in Vietnam. Back to Index of Australian Words neenishIt is a tradition at the Australian National University that computers have names as well as serial numbers. The computers at the Australian National Dictionary Centre are named after Australian food items: king prawn, icypole, pavlova, lamington, floater - and neenish. The last named computer gets its title from the neenish tart. But are neenish tarts Australian? Many people believe that they are. First, for those who are not of the cake-shop conglutination (aficionados of glucogunk), what is a neenish tart ? It is, it seems, a cake with a filling of mock cream, and iced in two colours - white and brown, or white and pink, or (occasionally) pink and brown. In May 1995, Column 8 in the Sydney Morning Herald included some discussion of the origin of the term: Wendy Kerr and Jenny Hawke, of the Forbes public library, found this in Patisserie, an encyclopedia of cakes, by Aaron Maree: `Thought to have been invented by cooks in outback Australia.' And that may be right. Leo Schofield, writing in the SMH in 1988, said his mother made them from a Country Women's Association cookbook sold in Orange in World War II. When he asked for information, some readers suggested they had a Viennese or German origin. But a Mrs Evans said they were first made in her home town, Grong Grong. She and her sister, Venus, nominated Ruby Neenish, a friend of their mother's, as the originator. Mrs Evans said that in 1913, running short of cocoa and baking for an unexpected shower tea for her daughter, Ruby made do by icing her tarts with half-chocolate, half-white icing. From then on they were known as neenish tarts. That, said Leo, would account for the tarts' popularity in country districts and country cookbooks. We have been unable to track down the eponymous Ruby Neenish, and some of the 'authenticating devices' in this account feel a little shaky - just how 'unexpected' can a shower tea be? The earliest reference to neenish we have been able to find occurs in a 1929 recipe for neenish cakes. This is in Miss Drake's Home Cookery by Lucy Drake, published at Glenferrie in Victoria. The cases are made from: 8 ozs. almond meal; 6 ozs. icing sugar; 1 large tablespoon flour; essence almonds; 2 whites of eggs. The filling is made of: 1 gill cream; 1/2 gill milk; 1/4 oz. gelatine; 1 tablespoon sugar; essence vanilla. No mock cream here. The icing is half white and half pink. The fifth edition of the Country Women's Association Cookery Book and Household Hints, published in Perth in 1941, has the following recipe, provided by E. Birch of Baandee: Cream 2 ozs. butter and add 1 tablespoon sugar, rub in 5 ozs. self-raising flour and a pinch of salt and mix to a stiff paste with an egg. Knead well. Roll on a well-floured board till very thin, line patty tins with paste and fill with a good thick custard. Glaze the tops with thin icing. Use chocolate and white alternately'. This time, the icing is half chocolate and half white. And, of course, no mock cream. More interesting is the fact that the cakes are called nienich tarts. This certainly has a Germanic ring to it, and the spelling continues to be used in the CWA Cookery Book as late as 1964. So here is the challenge. Do any of our readers have a cookery book printed before 1929 which includes neenish or nienich cakes or tarts? Can anyone provide evidence for a European origin? Are there any supporters of the pseudo-eponymous Ruby Neenish? Back to Index of Australian Words no worriesThat’s fine, okay, no problem. This colloquial version of the phrase ‘not to worry’ is very common in Australia, and also occurs in other forms such as ‘no worries, mate’, ‘no wuckers’, and ‘nurries’. It implies that everything will come right, or be taken care of, and that we should all be relaxed —‘Will you help me do my homework, Dad? It’s due tomorrow!’ ‘No worries, darl’. Back to Index of Australian Words ockerThe term ocker is one of the most common Australian words. I think it's surprising to discover that ocker, in its common meaning, is a relatively recent import into the Australian language. It dates from the late 1960s. As a nickname it has a longer history. Just as anyone with the surname McDonald is likely to be called Macca, or anyone with the surname Fowler is likely to be called Chook, so anyone with the personal name Oscar or Horace was likely to be called Ocker. In the 1920s, the Ginger Meggs cartoon included a character called Ocker Stevens, so anyone with the surname Stevens was also likely to be called Ocker. But we need to turn the 1960s for our very Australian ocker. And we need to turn to the world of Australian television. In the Mavis Bramston Show (1963-68) Ron Frazer (1924-83) played the character Ocker. Gerry Wilkes in Exploring Australian English, writes:
Soon after this, the word was used as a derisive nickname for a person who exploits an exaggerated Australian nationalism. Thus in King's Cross Whisper, 1969, we find:
At about the same time, the term came to describe a rough and uncultivated Australian male, often aggressively Australian in speech and manner. This is well summarised in a passage from the Bulletin in 1977:
Ockers are primarily male. For a brief period in the 1970s there were references to ockerinas. In the Sydney Sunday Telegraph in 1976 we find: 'Ockerina of the week was surely the woman on the Eastern Suburbs bus, studying a race guide while slurping down a meat pie'. But the true ocker is male. Back to Index of Australian Words on the wallabyThe word wallaby (used to describe many smaller marsupials of the family Macropididae) is a borrowing into English from Dharuk (the Aboriginal language formerly spoken in the Sydney region). It first appears in written form in 1798. The term wallaby track is first used to describe the path worn by a wallaby:
By the late 1840s the term had been transferred to the route followed by a person who journeys through the country, especially in search of seasonal work. It often occurs in the phrase on the wallaby track:
The phrase on the wallaby track is often abbreviated to on the wallaby:
Back to Index of Australian Words pavPavlova, a soft-centred meringue dessert topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit. It was named after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, who toured Australia and New Zealand in 1926. Australians claim they invented the dessert, but New Zealanders also claim that they invented it. The abbreviation pav, at least, is Australian, and recorded from 1966. Back to Index of Australian Words pineapple: get the rough end of the pineappleGet a raw deal, be treated badly—‘Sally got the sack? She really got the rough end of the pineapple!’ The force of the phrase derives partly from the fact that either end of a pineapple is ‘rough’, although the end with the prickly leaves is very rough indeed. The equivalent American saying is ‘to get the fuzzy end of the lollypop’. The expression was first recorded in the 1960s. Back to Index of Australian Words plonkWine. Now often used of cheap or poor quality wine, although Australian beer drinkers call any kind of wine plonk. This word had its origin with Australian soldiers in the First World War. They pronounced the French vin blanc, 'white wine', van blonk, and further transformed it into plonk. The Australian word has now spread to other Englishes. First recorded 1919. Back to Index of Australian Words pokiesPoker machines. Pokies are coin or card-operated. The punter presses a button or pulls a lever to spin the wheel, and the machine pays out, if you’re lucky, according to the combination of symbols that appear on the wheel. Known as ‘slot machines’ in the US, pokies are commonplace in Australian pubs and clubs, and a substantial revenue raiser. Back to Index of Australian Words pommy: dry as a pommy's towelExtremely dry. This is a play on various meanings of the word ‘dry’. The phrase can refer to rainless weather or to an arid landscape, but it is most commonly used to mean ‘thirsty’, especially in expressing a desire for a drink of beer. The phrase derives from the stereotypical Australian view of the English as reluctant to wash, and belongs with other anti-English terms such as ‘whingeing pom’ and ‘full as a pommy’s complaint box’. Back to Index of Australian Words pork chop: carry on like a pork chopTo make a fuss, to behave in a silly or excited way. This is an elaboration of the standard phrase ‘to carry on’. The pork chop is an Australian addition, and some people suggest that the phrase derives from the fact that frying pork makes an especially loud spitting noise. The Australian phrase may have been influenced by the expression like a pork chop in a synagogue, meaning ‘out of place’ or ‘unpopular’. Back to Index of Australian Words possum: stir the possumDeliberately cause controversy, especially in a public debate. The phrase was first recorded in 1900, but its origin is unknown. Some suggest it arose from a reversal of the American expression ‘to play possum’, which refers to the popular belief that the American possum feigns death when attacked. To ‘stir’ in Australian English is to deliberately cause trouble or tease someone. Back to Index of Australian Words prawnThe literal definition of prawn (a word which appears in the Middle English period, but whose origin is unknown) as an edible shellfish is obviously part of standard English. It is, however, the figurative use of the word to describe 'a fool or someone deserving of contempt' that seems to be predominantly Australian. As early as 1893 it is used to described the hapless worker:
It is used in this sense through the twentieth century:
In 1940 we have our first evidence of the combination raw prawn. This combination means 'an act of deception; a "swiftie"; an unfair action or circumstance, a "raw deal"; something which is "difficult to swallow".' Typical usages include:
In contemporary Australian English, however, the combination raw prawn is more likely to be heard in the idiom to come the raw prawn (on, over, with, etc.) meaning 'to attempt to deceive (a person); to misrepresent a situation'. The idiom is typically used in negative constructions - don't come the raw prawn with me. According to G.A. Wilkes, this expression originated in WW2 Services slang (A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms 1978) and indeed the Australian National Dictionary 's first citation for it is 1942:
The following citations indicate how the idiom is typically used in Australian English:
Back to Index of Australian Words public servantA person employed by a government authority; a civil servant. This current meaning originated in the convict system. Unease about the term convict led to the creation of euphemistic terms, including government man (1797), assigned servant (1817), and public servant (1797). The convict public servant was assigned to public labour. By 1812 the term was used of any government worker. Back to Index of Australian Words QueenslanderQueenslander, a person who is native to or resident in Queensland naturally finds a place in The Australian National Dictionary, along with Victorian, Tasmanian, Westralian, Territorian, and New South Welshman. The first citation for Queenslander is 1860, only one year after it was constitued as a separate colony in 1859, having previously formed part of New South Wales. Subsequent citations to the 1970s tend to present the Queenslander favourably, but later citations reflect a more disparaging attitude towards the inhabitants of this State, perhaps reflecting an increase in interstate rivalry, or perhaps indicating the attitude of Southerners towards what are popularly perceived as the conservative views of the inhabitants of the Sunshine State:
Similar sentiment is evident in the nickname Banana-bender frequently applied to Queenslanders: To the rest of the country Queensland was the home of the 'Banana Benders'. This, to Queenslanders.. was not a term of endearment. M. Grant, Barrier Reef (1980). The Australian National Dictionary acknowledges a transferred sense of the word Queenslander in the citation:
Another transferred usage of Queenslander, according the database at the Australian National Dictionary Centre, is its application to a distinct type of dwelling suited to tropical or semi-tropical conditions: an elevated,usually spacious, weatherboard house designed to maximise air movement in a humid climate:
Back to Index of Australian Words quollA brownish, cat-sized marsupial with distinctive white spots, a long tail and pointed snout. Quolls are nocturnal, and hunt insects, birds and small mammals. The word comes from Guugu Yimidhirr, an Aboriginal language of far north Queensland. James Cook recorded it in his Endeavour journal in 1770, but ‘native cat’ was used until the 1960s, when the Aboriginal word took over. Back to Index of Australian Words razoo: not a brass razooNo money at all. A razoo is a non-existent coin of trivial value. The origin of the term is unknown, although it is possibly a corruption of the French coin called a sou. The expression is always used in the negative—‘We did all the fundraising ourselves. Not a brass razoo came from the government’. The brass of brass razoo was no doubt influenced by the British brass farthing. The phrase often appears in the form not worth a brass razoo meaning ‘worth nothing at all’. Back to Index of Australian Words razor gangThe name applied to the Committee for Review of Commonwealth Functions, chaired by Treasurer Phillip Lynch in 1981, under the Fraser government of the time. Since then, the term has been applied to any similar committee or organisation that is seen to drastically slash expenditure, leading to cutting of public programs, extensive redeployment or threatened job losses. Back to Index of Australian Words right: you right?Do you need my help? Many a foreign visitor, entering an Australian shop, is bemused by the greeting of the sales assistant—‘you right?’ Although informal, this is not a sign of disrespect. It is the Australian equivalent of the standard query ‘are you being served?’ or ‘can I help you?’ It is short for ‘are you all right?’ Back to Index of Australian Words rogainingRogaining is a sport similar to orienteering, in which teams compete over a course which requires at least twelve hours to compete. N. and R. Phillips in Rogaining (1982) explain:
What is the origin of the term? A hint is provided in ACT Orienteering News 7 March 1986:
Back to Index of Australian Words rooned: we'll all be roonedWe will all be ruined. ‘Rooned’ is a comic representation of broad Irish-Australian speech. The saying is from the refrain of the poem ‘Said Hanrahan’, published in 1921 by John O’Brien, the pen name of P.J. Hartigan. Hanrahan is a farmer who predicts disaster whatever the conditions— ‘We’ll all be rooned,’ said Hanrahan, ‘before the year is out’. The expression is now used to mock the pessimists. Back to Index of Australian Words rortA fraudulent or dishonest act or practice (a tax rort). Also
used as a verb (to rort the system). Rort
comes from standard English rorty meaning ‘boisterous,
jolly’, and, in the late nineteenth century, ‘coarse, of
dubious propriety’. The second sense of rorty
disappeared, but has been retained in the Australian rort.
First recorded 1919. Back to Index of Australian Words
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